Black Guard Rising
by Spikey44
Summary: Ashe has always paid her dues. She owes the pirate a debt of gratitude. One she thought he'd never collect on. Now the pirate turns up bullet ridden and bleeding in her bedchamber, and this time he needs her help. Is this one debt Ashe can't afford to pay
1. Chapter 1

**Black Guard Rising**

_Disclaimer all known and recognisable characters and locales property of Square Enix; I just enjoy playing with them, abusing them, and otherwise misusing these masterful characters. _

**Prologue: 709 O.V: The Royal Palace Rabanastre**

Ashe knew there was something very definitely wrong as soon as she entered her private chambers. A Queen was almost never alone except when she was safely shut away in her bed chamber and while Ashe usually relished the brief eight hours during the night she had to herself, she now found her hand curling around the small dagger she kept on a leather thong at her hip as she stared down at the three, almost flower like spatters of crimson blood staining the smooth grey veined marble of her chamber floor.

The doors to her balcony had been forced open from the outside and there were smears of blood on the gauzy white curtains. Ashe unsheathed the dagger, moving silently to her chest at the foot of her bed where she kept the sword of kings in a custom made magickally imbued scabbard. There was someone in her bathroom. She could hear the harsh rasp of pained breathing.

The door to the en-suite toilet and bathroom was half ajar but she could not see who was inside. There was a flicker of shadow and light, someone moving jerkily and the quick, sharp sound of a in-drawn breath. Ashe hesitated. Three years of official rule and two years of guerrilla warfare with the resistance had given Ashe a rather contradictory set of instincts when faced with situations like these. One the one hand she had a small army of guardsmen paid to protect her royal person, on the other, she still preferred to fight her own battles.

Should she make her presence known to her intruder, or should she leave swiftly and alert the guard?

'You may as well come in, Highness,' the intruder in the bathroom called out to her and Ashe felt her jaw drop as she recognised the voice despite the strain that drew it taut and stole the music from its cadence, 'I can hear you dithering about out there.'

Balthier?

Ashe was in motion before she could think better of it. In the tiny increments of time marking the few feet between her bed and the bathroom door, a dozen thoughts ran through Ashe's mind. What was the pirate doing here? She had not had any contact with him since the Lemures troubles. In her day to day life in fact she doubted she ever spared a thought for him. She had more contact with Vaan and Penelo in fact, especially since the pair had given up pirating for more respectable lives in Rabanastre.

Ashe pushed open the door to the bathroom, dagger drawn before her. Life's hard lessons had taught her that an ally could easily become an enemy given time and opportunity enough and whatever bonds of camaraderie or anything else that had once stood between she and the pirate had long since been severed.

'Balthier what is the meaning of….' She stopped mid-chastisement. Her eyes widened and most of the thoughts in her head promptly took flight and departed. The pirate sat on the ornate tiled rim of her bathtub shirtless. Of course Ashe did not really comprehend his state of semi-undress because her eyes were mostly taken up with the mounds of foul smelling soiled bandages lying like discarded serpent skins all over the mosaic tiled floor.

'Good gods,' she breathed as the pirate rather clumsily juggled a bottle of some astringent smelling anti-septic lotion, reams of unspooling fresh bandages in one hand. His face was down turned and set in a grimace as he gripped in his teeth a vicious looking needle threaded with surgical grade couerl gut thread.

'I assure you highness,' Balthier gritted out around his mouthful, roughly upending the bottle of lotion onto the bandages and managing to splash most of the noxious stuff all over her polish tiles in the process, 'That the gods had nothing to do with this.'

Ashe had finally realised by this point what it was Balthier was trying to do. One whole side of his body, including his right arm, had become one advancing purple-black bruise, the scent of raw and shredded meat assailing her nostrils and filling the enclosed space of her bathroom was not one Ashe had ever thought to experience outside of a battlefield.

Balthier awkwardly slammed the wadded fistful of lotion soaked bandages against his side and Ashe was at his side in a instant as the pirate couldn't hold back a surprisingly savage howl of pain. The threaded bone needle fell from his lips (which was preferable to the man swallowing it) as Balthier doubled up in obvious pain.

'Balthier what has happened – let me see your wound.' Without waiting for him to comply she managed to push him upright and slap away the left arm he had curled around himself protectively. The pirate was sucking in rasping lung-full's of air, akin to a landed fish, head thrown back and eyes wild as he fought for composure.

Ashe stared at the horrible smelling blackened, puckered and pus rimmed bullet hole throbbing angrily on Balthier's lower right side. Instantly she dropped to her knees to further investigate the horrid, putrid wound.

'Why have you not had this healed?' she demanded of him but Balthier was not really up for conversation. Most likely completely unconsciously he had dropped one bloody hand onto her shoulder as she knelt before him and was gripping on for dear life. She heard the jangle of his ear-rings as he fiercely, mutely, shook his head. Whether in response to her words or simply in an attempt to deny the pain she did not know.

Ashe snatched the lotion soaked rags from Balthier's badly scrapped right hand and looked up into his sweat drenched face, 'This is going to hurt,' she warned him and was almost certain she caught the faintest of eye rolls from him in response, 'I need to clean the wound properly.'

It was unpleasant to say the least. The smell was unendingly foul as she swabbed away pus and infected juices from the wound site but Ashe didn't stop dousing the wound and wiping it clean until fresh blood began to well from the bullet hole. Balthier was shivering violently by this point but he hadn't said a word against her actions. In fact he'd barely made a peep even though it had to have hurt him a great deal.

Ashe dropped the filthy bandages and reached up a hand, from her position knelt between his legs as he perched precariously on the edge of her bathtub, so that she could touch his face. The pirate was burning up, his sharp features drawn taut and the bones seeming to stand out in famine relief against his chalk white, sweat slicked and blazing hot skin.

'What have you done to yourself?' she asked him dismayed as her mind raced ahead of her.

She was almost sure his fever meant that the infection from his bullet wound had entered his blood stream and Balthier clearly needed to see a trained healer or physician immediately. Unfortunately Balthier's presence here, uninvited in her private chambers, meant that he had obviously gone to some effort even in his condition to sneak into the palace undetected. Plus Balthier was a pirate and a queen shouldn't really be fetching doctors to tend to her injured pirate friend. Truthfully speaking Ashe was not sure she could even count Balthier as a friend – at least not anymore.

Ashe swore softly to herself; damn the pirate for dropping his problems into her lap. Who all she knew it was her own guardsmen who had shot at him as he tried to steal from her citizenry.

'Come on; get up.' She ordered briskly rising to her feet and tugging on Balthier's good arm while trying not to aggravate his wounds. The pirate looked up at her glassy eyed and Ashe wondered how long he was going to be able to stay conscious.

'Balthier get up, you can't stay here.'

He seemed to blink at her and she watched the visible effort it took him to marshal his thoughts. He nodded his head in one jerky motion and rather awkwardly looped his good arm around her shoulders. Ashe staggered under his unexpected weight (Balthier was a big man, and although not as muscular as Basch or even Vaan, he was still more weight than Ashe, many inches shorter than he, could easily manage).

To the pirate's credit after he had managed to lever himself up off the rim of the bathtub he did try to take most of his weight onto himself, but it soon became apparent that the deep raw and weeping abrasions that decorated his whole right torso, must also travel down his leg, for he limped painfully.

It seemed to take an age to get him to her bed and then, when she was about to shove him down onto the counterpane he resisted her. 'No,' he shook his head letting go of her to brace a hand against the carven post of her bed, 'No, this was a mistake. I have to go.'

Ashe snorted in less than regal fashion and rather unkindly shoved him (but on his good side) until he toppled onto her bed with a less than manly whimper. 'Balthier you are not going anywhere. Frankly I'm surprised you're not dead already.'

The pirate was forced to smirk at that, if only for a second, and that one curl of his lips made Ashe feel just fractionally better.

'Well,' he mumbled, swaying as he sat on the side of her bed, 'at least fetch some towels that I can lie on,' he looked up at her with pain filled but sardonic eyes, 'I'm in enough trouble without committing the crime of soiling the sheets of a Dynast Queen's bed.'

Ashe did just that and eventually she had the pirate lying on his back on a collection of fluffy white towels laid over her bed sheets. He was grey in pallor by this point and panting hard enough that she might have imagined he had just outrun a herd of furious Wu upon the Ozmone Plains.

Ashe settled herself on the bed beside him with a damp cloth; she swept it over his perspiring brow. 'Balthier I need to know what has happened. You need to see a healer, but I can't afford to court scandal by aiding you if you have been hurt in some foolish caper gone awry.'

Ashe did not particularly like herself as the words left her mouth. She did not forget that Balthier and Fran had perhaps single-handedly saved Rabanastre from utter destruction by piloting the Bahamut away from the city's paling, but as queen she followed the edicts of a higher calling and Balthier was a criminal with a bounty on his head.

Ashe blinked as she suddenly came to wonder for the first time where Balthier's Viera partner was.

'Balthier – where is Fran?' Ashe could hear the deep thumping of her own heart as the pirate's eyes snapped open to meet hers, 'Balthier?'

She asked again ice water filling her veins; the two sky pirates were inseparable. She could not imagine that Balthier would be staggering around in this state if Fran was alive and well, but the thought that some harm could have come to the Viera left Ashe almost light headed with fear.

The light of fevered panic sparking behind the pirate's eyes did nothing to reassure Ashe. 'It isn't true.' He told her tightly and suddenly his hand was wrapped around her wrist, fingers digging in tightly and squeezing down on the bone.

'What isn't true?' Ashe tried to peel his hand off her but he wouldn't let go, 'Balthier you are hurting me – let go.'

The pirate only then seemed to realise he was gripping her wrist so tightly and he let go of her almost reluctantly. She watched some unknowable emotion dance over his pallid features until he turned his head away. She watched him take in a deep shaking breath and release it. She thought that the tremor running through his limbs was not symptomatic of his fever alone.

'I don't believe it, they are lying.' He whispered almost too quietly for Ashe to hear and with none of his usual verbose poetry. Ashe found herself leaning forward, leaning across Balthier's body, to hear him.

'Who is lying? Balthier what has happened to you, and where is Fran?'

'I don't know,' he whispered eyes closed and head turned away from her as he clenched his left fist in a knot of her bed sheet, managing to soil her bedding with his bloody palm despite his insistence on precautions against such.

'You don't know who shot and beat you?' Ashe asked him completely confused.

'No,' Balthier turned back to her with an almost frustrated petulance. 'No I mean that I do not know where Fran is.' He snapped, raising his left hand to scratch at his sweat sodden hair, managing to paint his face with his own blood, like some sort of primitive tribal brand.

'They have taken her, I'm sure of it. I don't, I _won't_, believe their lies.' He bit out heatedly.

'Balthier I cannot understand you.'

Ashe had never seen the pirate so undone. This was a man who was suave and debonair while inside a falling sky fortress. The pirate literally laughed in the face of death as an occupational norm. Now he was bleeding all over her bath towels and talking nonsense.

'They say I killed her.' Balthier breathed out raggedly ignoring Ashe's confusion in favour of venting his own. He turned to look straight up at her and his fever wild eyes were dark with a crashing fear.

'They say I murdered Fran.'


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Anyone who has read stories I have written will be familiar with my tendency to write different time periods and flashbacks, into my narratives. In this story anything dated 708 O.V. is a flashback for Balthier. Anything headed 709 O.V. is 'present' time and involves Ashe. _

* * *

**Chapter One: 708 O.V. The Feast Night of Brighid: the spring equinox**

The jig was a merry one, the fiddles fast and sweet, the squeeze boxes well tuned and the trumpets brassy. The drink was un-watered and free flowing, and the company was, well, _obliging _might be the most delicate way to put it.

The bright garlands of colour streaming from the ceiling in trails of gold and green were beginning to run together and blur about the edges. There was a wonderful quality of indistinct fuzziness about everything as Balthier raised his tankard to his lips and was somewhat bemused to find it empty. Empty, already? He upended the tankard to be absolutely sure there was nothing inside it and scowled when not a single drop ran out.

Well that wouldn't do. He glanced across the very long and indistinct expanse of the tavern to the bar. He growled under his breath and slouched down in his chair. Why could the bar not be closer to where he was sat – and where had all the buxom barmaids gone?

A giggle right into Balthier's ear, of decidedly feminine nature, momentarily confused him and it occurred to Balthier as a feminine hand clasped his chin and turned his face into an anonymous kiss that tasted of beer and lust, that he was quite astoundingly drunk already.

Hmm, time to take stock, he thought in muddled fashion as his lap was rather rudely invaded by his enthusiastic companion. Balthier found his arms filled with a wriggling voluptuous feminine form. Right then, Balthier thought as his brain tried to tread the flood waters of inebriation drowning out short term memory and common sense, right, first things first he needed to……

'Why, you little minx.'

Balthier was caught half in laughter and half in fright as his lap interloper reached down past his belt line to pitter-patter a soft warm palm over his groin. The woman straddling his lap then proceeded to nip at his jewel heavy ear-lobe with sharp little white teeth. The serpent flicker as her tongue dipped into the well of his ear made Balthier shudder.

All semblance of thought departed swiftly on the heels of these developments. Under splayed fingers Balthier felt the run of old velvet and the scratch of lace; a strong sleek back angled downward under the run of his hands to a pert rump under mounds of petticoats and crinoline skirt. He tasted deeply of the woman's mouth; lifted a hand to tangle fingers into an artful tumble of thick dark ringlet curls. He heard purring moans build inside a tightly constrained breast as he ran one hand up the sharp architecture of a boned bodice and dipped questing fingers down into the bulging cleft of a heaving décolletage.

'Excuse me sir, are you the pirate Balthier?'

Like a taper to a line of explosive the new voice entering the throbbing kaleidoscope of Balthier's inflamed senses triggered an instant chain reaction. A duelling pistol materialised in his hand, almost as if conjured from thin air, and Balthier tore his mouth from his lap mate's lips.

'What?' It was almost a growl and the duelling pistol found the perfect angle and height of position, his finger curled keenly around the trigger, to fire a ball of shot straight into the forehead of the dark clad man before him. 'Who the bloody blue blazes are you and what do you want?'

The furious revelry in the tavern all around them continued on as if it was a fairly common occurrence, not even worthy of an audience, for patrons to draw weapons on fellow patrons (and in fact it was – this was a _pirate _tavern, after all). The dark clad man, dressed like a man in want of a good funeral, simply widened his eyes in brainless surprise at this less than rapturous welcome.

'Ahem, excuse me sir,' the man continued in a smooth voice native to bankers and professional liars, 'Would you be the pirate Balthier?'

Balthier squinted down the barrel of his pistol at the man as his lap mate decided that the intruder was not interesting enough to capture her attention and proceeded to nibble down the line of his neck to his half open shirt front. This proved to be rather distracting and Balthier found himself struggling to keep the man's fractious image in focus as the stranger waited on him with an expectant look on his face.

'What?' Balthier growled faintly incoherent, 'What do you want?'

It was possible that any listening audience might have found Balthier's tone of address belligerent in the extreme. Balthier did not care; the woman in his lap had latched her lips over his sweet spot high on his neck just behind his left ear and was now trying to suck his thundering pulse right down her throat. Once again Balthier lost all conceptual awareness of his surroundings.

The stranger cleared his throat, an abrupt and unwelcome sound. Balthier snapped the drooping pistol back up in aim and snarled at the man, 'What do you bloody well want?'

'Forgive me sir,' the stranger simpered in disgustingly ingratiating manner, 'But would you happen to be the pirate Balthier?'

At that moment Balthier's very friendly female companion bit down hard on his throat only to then release his flesh to worry his ear lobe with her teeth instead; her fast fingers slipping inside his shirt.

'Let's go upstairs,' she whispered and Balthier was vaguely surprised to discover she could talk. Almost inconsequentially he wondered if this luscious lady also had a name and if he had actually bothered to ascertain what that name was. He almost hoped not, because at this present time he'd be blow'd if he could remember what it was. To be fair, Balthier would have been hard pressed to recite his own name at the present time as well.

Forgetting the annoying little man at his shoulder once again Balthier recaptured his lap mate's mouth. Going upstairs sounded like a very good idea, but Balthier had unfortunately forgotten the proper physiological processes necessary to walk let alone attempt the arduous task of climbing stairs. In truth he thought it all seemed like a lot of effort for no real advantage; he was perfectly comfortable in his chair.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder: poke, poke; poke. Balthier exploded to his feet, almost launching his lap mate across the tankard littered tavern table and knocking over his own chair with a clatter. Slamming one hand down on the table top before he fell on his arse Balthier cocked back the hammer on his pistol and shoved it into the dark clad little man's brow.

'Bugger off, would you?' Balthier made his suggestion in a surprisingly calm voice when taken in conjunction with his less than friendly adjoining actions. The tavern tilted alarmingly off kilter as he tried to maintain his balance, and the ambient sounds of the room sloshed around the edges of his awareness like ocean surf trapped in a bottle.

The black clad man, who had a pencil thin black moustache which twitched like a wriggling worm over his thin top lip, cleared his throat once again; a decidedly unpleasant guttural sound. Balthier felt his finger twitch on the trigger of his pistol. The man watched him with almost colourless small, round, grey eyes.

'Forgive me sir once again, for I can see you are otherwise engaged,' the man ducked a bobbing nod to the woman who had picked herself up off the floor and tangled her limbs around Balthier once more, 'But I was wondering if you happened to be the sky pirate Balthier?'

'No,' Balthier said, 'I'm not, now sod off.'

Now he was standing Balthier was not sure he liked the change in altitude. His stomach was churning and he did not feel at all secure standing so high. The floor looked much more secure; he thought he might like to take a little lap while lying on it. Good gods but he was in his cups tonight. His helpful female companion (and he really must remember to ask her name) slipped his arm, the one not holding a gun on the annoying black clad man, around her shoulders and began to manoeuvre him in the direction of the stairs, and up, to the rent by the hour rooms on the top floor of the tavern.

Balthier that he would allow this, for it seemed a very good course of action and he, himself, had lost all sense of direction and doubted he'd even be able to find his chair again without considerable help. Well that was not strictly true….he was fairly confident he could fall over without assistance.

'Ah,' the annoying twitchy man once again cleared his throat and had Balthier possessed the co-ordination of movement he would have shot the blasted, spittle throated fool right through the centre of his head then and there, 'Excuse me sir, I have obviously been mistaken.'

The man bobbed a little bow to him and Balthier ignored him. He was too busy with more important matters, like putting one foot in front of the other and not falling over.

'By the way sir,' the man called after him as Balthier was being cajoled by his eager female friend towards the stairs. Balthier turned back irritably, although his gun was now back in its holster hanging from his hip (he wasn't sure how that happened but as he was fast growing insensible anyway he supposed it didn't much matter.)

'What?' He demanded almost plaintively. Could the man not see he was blindingly, stupidly drunk and thus less than amenable to conversation at the present time? 'What do you want _now_?'

The neat little black clad man smiled at him solicitously, 'Oh I merely wanted to inquire after Fran,' he said easily in his smooth and obsequious voice, 'is your partner well?'

Balthier frowned bewildered and wrong footed by this change of conversational tact; Fran? Fran was not even in port right now. She wasn't due to dock the Strahl and come and retrieve him from his little solo sojourn in debauchery for another two days.

'She's fine,' he mumbled and even in his befuddled state he caught the flash of triumph in the little man's nondescript face. Balthier blinked, he realised then that he really shouldn't have answered that question, and he swore bitterly – only making his situation that much worse.

Buggery-damn, why did this sort of thing always happen whenever Balthier took a few days out of his hectic schedule of piracy to indulge in acts of mindless hedonism? It just wasn't bloody fair.

The little man bobbed at him again, a smug little smile playing over his small pinched mouth. Darting forward with the swift, jerky movements of a little bird, the man suddenly proffered a darkened and scratched metal disk, the size of a coin, attached to a small tag.

'For you master Balthier,' he pushed the tag and coin into Balthier's palm before he could react, 'The Company has need of a man of your,' the man paused to flick an avian look of fastidious distaste up and down Balthier's dishevelled form, '_calibre.' _

Balthier looked at the disk in his palm along with the tag, and curled his lip contemptuously. 'I'm drunk not addle-pated,' Balthier scoffed, 'I'm not some foolish sot you can impress into your filthy crew.'

He tipped his palm up and let the disk and the tag fall to the floor without ever touching fingers to the cold disk. Then, with as much intoxicated dignity as he could muster (without falling over), he turned and began the laborious process of climbing the stairs with the assistance of his enthusiastic (nameless) partner for the night.

The bird-like twitchy man swooped down to retrieve the disk before it had bounced twice on the filthy stone floor of the tavern, 'You are making a mistake sir, Mister Speck….'

Balthier caught hold of the banister rail upon the landing and twisted around to snarl down over his shoulder. 'Mister Speck can go hang,' Balthier spat upon the top step to give further weight to his words. He was almost vibrating with anger. 'And so can the rest of his bloody _Company. _I'll be a pauper before I join that bastard and his pack of scum_._'

* * *

**709 O.V high summer eve: Queen Ashelia's Bedchamber – Rabanastre**

Ashe gnawed on her bottom lip as she paced back and forth and back again across her bed chamber floor at the foot of her bed. The hours of darkness were fast running away from her; dawn threatened on the horizon. She was going to have to do something with the damned pirate before her ladies in waiting came in and found a notorious sky pirate thrashing around in a fever dream in the Queen's bed.

Balthier had passed out rather swiftly after dropping that little bomb shell of a revelation regarding Fran and she hadn't been able to rouse him. Thus Ashe had spent however many hours in a tangle of frustrated thought; with the turning of every minute she would resolve to pitch the pirate out of her balcony window and let him resolve his own troubles, one second, only to recant in guilt the next.

Again and again a flurry of anxiety, she came close to summoning the royal physician for Balthier regardless of the political and personal bind doing so would put her. Yet she did not call for the physician – or at least she would not do so for the time being. She needed to find out what was truly going on first.

Ashe didn't believe for a moment that Balthier had harmed a hair on Fran's head. Not only was the mere idea ludicrous, for if the pirate could be said to love anyone it was Fran, but moreso his devotion to his partner far outstripped even his very great devotion to the preservation of his own skin. Add to that the fact that Ashe had seen Fran in battle; she could not imagine that Balthier would be able to best Fran even if he had, in a moment of unspeakable madness, tried to harm her in someway.

Nevertheless someone obviously thought Balthier had harmed the Viera and moreover, some part of Balthier must think he could have done as well. Ashe hadn't imagined the sick fear in his eyes when he had told her that Fran was missing.

Eventually her frantic pacing took Ashe back to Balthier's side. She crossed her arms and tapped her foot irritably as she looked down at the pirate in her bed, who was breathing shallowly and painfully, eyelashes jumping against his sallow cheeks.

'Why?' She asked the very air before her, glaring down at the insensate man lying delirious in a twist of her sheets, 'Two years without so much as a word, or a badly written note, and now you have the temerity to drop into my personal chambers and put me into this intolerable position?'

Ashe picked up the cloth soaking in the patterned bowl of ice water she had placed on her bedside table. She wrung out the cloth and mopped the pirate's brow with frustrated care. 'Why Balthier; why come to me of all people?'

'…..no…..no one else……,' Ashe dropped the dripping cloth onto the pirate's face in surprise as his parched lips formed the words; embarrassed Ashe snatched the cloth back up and found herself looking into Balthier's familiar golden brown eyes.

'There was no one left; no one left who can help.' He told her taking the cloth from her and pressing it to his face. He started to cough hoarsely and the involuntary movement jarred his bullet wound and forced a moan of pain to escape him.

He clutched the cloth and faced Ashe soberly, 'You owe me, Ashe. I gave you back your ring.'

'What?' Ashe recoiled in shock. She couldn't quite believe he had said what he had just said. 'What did you say?'

Yes, it was true that her own thoughts had been running along these lines. Yes, ultimately Ashe knew that, whatever personal motivations Balthier might have harboured when he had sided with her to face off against the Empire for all those months three years ago, she still owed Balthier for diverting Bahamut's course and saving Rabanastre from utter annihilation. Aside from the debt she may or may not still owe him for his advice, his loyalty, and his aid during her quest to recover her throne, it was Bahamut that stood the ultimate debt between them.

Nevertheless it had been three years since Bahamut's fall; three years in which time Balthier had shown no inclination to collect on the debt, or that he even considered there to be a debt owing. Certainly during the crisis with Mydia the Judge of Wings and the Aegyl Balthier had treated her with complete indifference, thus convincing Ashe that any feelings of lasting loyalty or affection between them had been a complete misconception on her part.

'You heard me well enough, majesty.'

Balthier tried to raise himself up into a sitting position but stopped swiftly when bending at the waist induced nothing but pain. He collapsed breathlessly back against her pillows but slanted a keen eyed look her way, 'You owe me your kingdom,' he contrived to smile without either humour or warmth, 'and now I need something from you in return.'

Ashe felt the blood run from her face, 'I will not aid you in crime. I gave up too much, _risked_ too much, to place my kingdom and my throne in jeopardy.'

She clenched her fists upon her lap, spine arrow straight and shoulders drawn back, and although she did not know it, she resembled nothing so much as a Tchita serpent about to strike. Balthier actually smirked at her, a slight snicker of amusement escaping him.

'Calm yourself, Highness,' he drawled huskily closing his eyes almost tiredly, 'I'm not after your bloody throne.'

Ashe was nettled; she felt both foolish and relieved. Balthier might be a pirate and that led one to question some aspects of his character, but the man had an odd sort of honour all the same. He did not lie outright and he had never shown the faintest inclination towards amassing personal power. She didn't think he was here to blackmail or extort her – but what he might want from her could be just as dangerous.

'Balthier, please,' she grabbed the cloth from him in her agitation, and dumped it back into the bowl. She plucked out a clump of ice and held it before his lips, 'Do not ask this of me. I am a _Queen_, Balthier, I have to uphold a standard.'

Balthier opened his lips around the chip of ice, sucked on the end and managed to pull the ice chip into his mouth entire. He swallowed hard and gratefully. The ice melting to water at the back of his throat was cooling the parched burn rising from within.

'Without Fran and I,' he argued back mercilessly despite the dryness of his throat and the pain making him pant, 'You would be queen of nothing but sand and rubble.'

Ashe turned her head away. She had almost forgotten how crushingly tactless Balthier could be. 'I cannot keep you here Balthier, whatever trouble you are in you shall have to find sanctuary to lick your wounds elsewhere.'

Balthier shifted, grunting behind clenched and bared teeth, as he levered himself upright in her bed despite his injuries. 'You have an entire kingdom to hide me in Ashe.' His hand coiled around her wrist and his expression was very, very serious when he spoke his next words, 'You _owe_ me, moreover you owe Fran - and you _will _help me so that I can find her.'

'This is blackmail.' Ashe tried to pull her wrist free but Balthier would have none of it. As hurt and sick as he was, there was strength in his grip on her that had nothing to do with physical prowess.

'Hardly that,' he almost sneered, 'all I am asking is for a queen in her infinite benevolence to find some meagre hovel in this sink hole of a principality that I can lay low in until I'm fit to move on.'

Ashe stared at him in naked fury, 'Sink hole principality?' she wrenched her wrist clear of him and jerked back from the bed, 'How dare you? How dare you call Dalmasca a….a _sink hole_!'

Balthier looked as coolly saturnine and distaining as it was possible for a feverish man who hasn't shaved or washed in days to look – which, Ashe reasoned, was just another very good reason to hate him.

'I'll call your bloody kingdom what I damn well please,' he snapped back, 'and you should be thankful that I am a gentleman, for otherwise I should call Dalmasca's ungrateful little madam of a monarch much worse.'

Ashe could feel her fingers trembling with rage, 'Ungrateful little madam?' Ashe was incandescent with fury. 'You bastard pirate! You come in here, dripping blood and pus all over my floor, and now you insult me?'

Balthier was staring at her as if she was the one being unreasonable. 'Ashe for the love of all that's holy, woman, there is a _bullet_ lodged in my side; I am accused of killing my dearest friend; I have lost _four months_ of my life and do not even know how came I to set foot in your sodding country,' Balthier stopped abruptly and sucked in a breath of pain; when he spoke again he had managed to gain a rigid hold on his own temper.

'Highness all I am asking is that you let me stay in Dalmasca until I am well enough to continue searching for Fran.'

Ashe stared at him as she processed his words, 'The bullet is still in the wound?'

Instantly she moved back to the bed, shoved the intolerably annoying pirate back down against the pillows; she palpitated the wound site with her fingers, trying to look inside the hole to see if he was telling the truth.

'Gods woman, get off me!'

Balthier tried to knock her away with a sweep of his bad arm as she probed the wound site with her fingers. When she looked up at him annoyed he was staring at her as if she had grown a second, and decidedly hideous, head upon her shoulders.

'Balthier if the bullet is still inside you, we must get it out.' she pointed out this rudimentary fact as if speaking to an ill-behaving child. Balthier continued to stare at her as if she was the most perverse and vicious thing he had ever laid eyes on.

'I do not want your fingers digging about in my flesh,' he told her rather succinctly and Ashe didn't know whether or not to be offended. 'I'd sooner keep the bullet.'

Ashe was unimpressed, 'Perhaps, but you still expect me to open up my kingdom to you, offer up my healers and physicians to a known criminal, with no explanation whatsoever and very little gratitude for the risks I face in so doing - does that seem fair exchange to you, pirate?'

Balthier scowled at her, 'Have I asked you to tend to me, hmm? Have I asked for a physician?' He demanded imperiously.

'Gods above and below Ashe, I don't care if you dump me in the Garamsythe waterway and be done. All I ask of you is that you deny ever having seen me if you should be asked, and that you find me a place I can rest undisturbed until such time as I can get myself away from your bloody country forever.'

Ashe frowned at him, 'If you do not want anyone to know you are here, why break into my palace?' A thought occurred to her, 'In fact why come to me at all; why not seek aid from Vaan and Penelo? They could hide you far better than I and with less risk.'

Balthier shook his head savagely, 'No. I sent the pair of them away from the pirate life to keep them out of this mess. I can't involve them in this.' All the anger left Balthier at once as he tipped his head back against her headboard, carved with the Dalmasca crest of arms, and closed his eyes. 'Not with Fran…….missing,' he whispered bloodlessly.

Ashe felt her own ire leaving her. She rubbed a thumb against her bottom lip and tried to think. Vaan and Penelo had come home to Rabanastre just under a year ago and promptly stayed put in Low Town from then on. As far as she knew they had not once left the city. She had inferred, from the letters Penelo wrote to she and Lord Larsa both, that the pair had grown disillusioned with the nomadic life of a sky pirate and had simply wanted to come home. Now though Balthier seemed to be suggesting that they had come home under orders from him.

'Balthier what is going on?' she asked him exasperated. She didn't really expect an answer and so was surprised to receive one.

'_The Company_,' Balthier wheezed shifting painfully in the bed, 'It's all their doing. The bastards stole four months of my memory from me, stole my partner….stole my bloody _ship _and left me for dead.'

Ashe blinked at him, 'You've lost the Strahl as well as Fran?'

Balthier gave her a look, which in a healthier man might have been called petulant. 'Yes,' he grated out harshly before closing his eyes in something like defeat, 'I have been laid very low indeed, Highness.' A bitter and derisive snort escaped him, 'So much for the leading man.'

Ashe picked up the sopping cloth floating in the melt water once again, wringing it out, and for lack of anything more constructive to be doing, she began roughly mopping Balthier's face and upper chest.

'What is the "company"?'

Balthier curled his top lip in a snarl of pure hatred as she smacked him about the head lightly with the cloth in a fumbled attempt to be of help.

'Dead men, the whole lot of them, when I get my hands on the bastards,' Balthier promised with chilling simplicity.

Ashe almost rolled her eyes. 'Bravado doesn't help anyone Balthier. If this "company" has managed to capture Fran and take the Strahl from you, they are obviously dangerous, and you are in no condition to take on a Giza Hare, let alone a group of organised brigands.'

'Yes, thank you, Highness,' Balthier gave her a droll look, 'I would never have realised the severity of my situation on my own,' he bared his teeth in something that was in no way approximating a smile, 'and I thank you for sharing your glowing confidence in my abilities.'

Ashe chose to take the high road, as befitted a queen, and did not dignify his ill-tempered ire with response. Though it could be said that the look she gave him had a form of eloquence all of its own.

Balthier sighed upon getting the full treatment of _that_ look, and swallowed back any more inadvisable sarcasm as Ashe continued to lightly bludgeon him with the damp and dripping cloth until he was dripping ice water and fever sweat in equal measure.

'That is why I came here in the first place Ashe,' he admitted to her finally, and she saw naked honesty in his eyes, 'There is no one else in Ivalice I can trust; no one else who will believe me.' He stared at her with haunted eyes, 'Fran is not dead; I could never hurt her.'

Ashe stopped drenching him with water from her rag and dropped it back down into the bowl. 'I know that,' she told him with absolute conviction. 'I cannot believe that anyone who knows you and Fran would believe such a thing.'

A caustic smile slashed across his face and Balthier dropped his eyes, 'There is no one save Fran who knows me, Majesty – and there is no one, save yourself, I can turn to for aid.'

Ashe sucked in a breath sharply, much as one who has just received a fist to the gut; Ashe had no doubt in her mind that the pirate had phrased his words just so, to have just that effect on her and she glared at him in impotent anguish.

'You bastard,' she whispered clenching her fists into the folds of her blood splattered skirt. Balthier's lips quivered up in one corner, a sure admission of culpability. He actually inclined his head in almost regal acknowledgement.

'Yes,' he agreed with the assessment without rancour, 'But an honest one.'

Ashe looked away from him, but they both knew he'd won.

'One week, pirate; I will find some place to hide you for one week: seven days and seven nights and not an hour more,' she stated firmly. 'But if I find you have lied or led me false in any way, I swear to you, Balthier, you'll be swinging from a gibbet in the Muthru Bazaar before you know the time of day.'

Balthier actually laughed at that, bright as a shard of sunlight breaking upon the surface of a pond. 'I would expect nothing less from the Dynast Queen,' he nodded his head to her, in a gesture that in another man might have passed for deference but in Balthier was just a subtle form of mockery.

He placed a hand to his chest. 'I am in your debt and in your care, my queen.'

Ashe rolled her eyes and huffed a sigh of disgust; Balthier was lying and they both knew it. He would never consider himself indebted to her, and he certainly would never give his fealty to any anointed monarch; she knew well that the pirate accepted no authority over his life save his own (or possible Fran). All the same a treacherous little part of Ashe, the part that had always enjoyed the pirate's sly company, could not deny that she enjoyed the way his words had sounded.

_My queen_, he had called her and ne'er had two words sounded sweeter to her ears, nor, she doubted it not, would there ever be two other words so treacherous to her good name.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Two: 708 O.V: High Spring Tide**

Balthier was waiting for the Strahl as Fran brought his ship into a smooth dock in the aerodrome hangar. The sunlight pouring in through the iris slit roof of the hangar hurt his pounding head but Balthier chose to ignore this. It was his own fault his head hurt in the first place.

Seated on a large packing crate, one knee drawn up as a perch for his chin, Balthier slowly uncoiled and slipped off the crate as the Strahl's boarding ramp dropped down with an almost silent whisper of hydraulics; Balthier stretched, yawned, bowed his spine to iron out the kinks, and slung the cloth sack over his shoulder before ambling at sedate pace up the gangway and into his ship.

'Hello Balthier,' Penelo leaned around one of the passenger seats in the Strahl's main cabin to grin at him a little mischievously, 'Did you enjoy your shore leave? You're looking a little pale,' the little madam then batted her eyelashes at him, having grown bold in the last year and a half. 'Are you not feeling well?' She simpered.

Balthier mock scowled at her. 'I don't like your tone young lady.' He croaked out (his voice was hoarse as a desert wind – he was a little worried he had caught some unpleasant malady while in port) and he wagged his finger at the young girl in braided pig-tails in mock approbation.

Penelo giggled as he passed her and in petty revenge he dropped his bundle straight into her lap.

'Be a dear and sort this, would you?' He carried on to the front of the cabin.

Fran's long elegant ears rose, flickering, up above the pilot's chair (his usual seat) and Vaan's beaming, vacuously content face, peered at him from around the navigator's chair. Balthier stifled uncharitable thoughts and notions which no doubt sprang from his hang-over. He didn't truly wish to punch the boy.

'Fran said we might have to go and find you.' Vaan told him, clearly a bit disappointed that this was not the case. 'She said there were thirteen taverns in port and you'd probably caused a fight in all of them.'

Balthier shot an unloving look at the back of Fran's head before lightly smacking Vaan about the crown, 'Out of my chair, boy.'

'Hey, no fair,' Vaan yelped like an infant but vacated the seat fast enough.

'Are you even fit to co-pilot?' The boy asked a bit unwisely as he moved towards the back of the cabin and Balthier stuck out a foot to trip him as he went. Penelo, watching these familiar shenanigans with open enjoyment, laughed out loud as Vaan staggered and almost fell.

'Zip the lips, Vaan,' Balthier suggested mildly, 'Or you'll be out the air-lock.'

Without further ado he then collapsed gracefully into the navigator/co-pilot's chair usually filled by Fran and sank gratefully into its plush upholstered depths. Fran finally deigned to slant a sideways glance his way.

'Has the spirit of Brighid left you now, Balthier?' He could see the slight flare of her nostrils as she sampled his scent for lingering traces of drink in his blood stream. Fran detested the scent of drunken humes – or at least she did when the hume was Balthier himself.

Balthier couldn't help just the slightest of smirks from rising to his lips as he answered her, 'Yes Fran, my shore leave was very enjoyable. How was the Ecosta purvama?'

Fran's lips twitched just a little and her right ear twitched, 'Enjoyable.'

'Marvellous,' Balthier shaded his eyes as Fran began launch procedures; sunlight cascaded down from the opening hangar roof. He squeezed his eyes closed as the Strahl lurched upward. Gold and blue afterimages danced behind his tightly closed eyelids.

In their years of partnership Balthier and Fran were usually perfectly content to live, work, and do everything in-between, together in very close quarters. They were, for the most part, all each other needed in all Ivalice, but even partners with as close a bond as they, required a little respite to indulge in their disparate passions alone from time to time.

So, four or five times in a year, Fran would pitch Balthier out of his own ship, and drop him in the middle of some likely pirate port with instructions that he was to try not to get himself killed and a promise to retrieve him in a week's time. Balthier would then proceed to indulge in what Fran euphemistically called 'the call of Brighid' and scratch that particular hot-blooded itch that Fran most emphatically would not assist him with, but any number of nubile young women would.

Fran in the meantime usually took her respite upon any number of tropical, verdant and un-populated purvama dotting the skies and, well, Balthier wasn't completely sure what she did while she was up there, but whatever it was he suspected she was quite pleased to be doing it alone.

Now, sighing with contentment for being back in the Strahl once more, Balthier was just about to put his feet up and take a nap to soothe his pounding head, when Penelo's little cooing gasp of happiness broke through the cheerful silence of the cabin.

'Oh, these are pretty.' The girl had obviously managed to pry open the knots in his bindle and the purloined white table cloth fell open over her knees as she handled Balthier's shore leave ''acquisitions''.

(One should always gather mementos when in foreign climes; Balthier just didn't see why one should _pay_ for them).

'Wow,' Vaan had reached across the aisle in between the seats to snatch up a gilt emblazoned Mythril candle stick, while Penelo lifted a long loop of pale pink pearls up to the light. Her eyes held a decidedly avaricious light in them as she sorted a tangle of jet beads, shell ear rings, and coloured glass bangles.

'Oh what's this?' The girl had found a pale grey velvet pouch in the jumble and pulled it loose. Balthier glanced back behind him as she did so and stretched out a hand.

'I'll have that.'

A little reluctantly Penelo handed it over and consoled herself with guarding the rest of the ''treasures'' from Vaan. Balthier smirked in amusement for a moment; it was so easy to please these children: a few coloured beads and a pearl and the girl thought she'd stumbled on the lost crown jewels of Nabudis.

Fran was watching him, not with her eyes, which remained fixed on the horizon as she deftly piloted them away from the port, but with her other senses. He could almost taste her curiosity and he smirked, proffering his little pouch: 'For you, Fran.'

He laid the bag in her lap and sat up a little straighter as Fran removed her hands from the steering levers (the Strahl was going in a straight line and there were no on- coming ships). Without a word Fran unfastened the silk ribbon holding the neck of the little bag tightly closed, and raised the pouch to her nose to sniff the contents.

Balthier watched her reaction keenly, catching and cataloguing the quiver of pleasure in her long ears, the sudden flicker of her gaze sideways to him and the spark of warmth in those ruby depths. She nodded to him, deeply, the ghost of a smile just touching her lips. She then re-sealed the bag and placed it securely in her lap as she took control of the Strahl once more.

Balthier turned back to watch the horizon at the same time she did. He didn't need to hear meaningless platitudes of gratitude to know that Fran appreciated her gift.

Satisfied Balthier once again settled down into his chair and closed his eyes. His headache really wasn't all that bad, and now that they were cruising through the clouds instead of rising jerkily from the aerodrome, the nausea twirling in his stomach was almost gone.

'Hey Balthier?'

Vaan poked his head forward from the back passenger seat directly behind Balthier. Balthier resisted the desire to slam his elbow backwards into that moon-round face.

'What?' He asked making his disinterest in the answer clear in the phrasing of the question. Alas, as always, Vaan continued blathering on undeterred.

'Um, I was wondering what you were going to do with all this stuff?' He meant, of course, the fistfuls of trinkets Balthier had purloined while on shore leave. 'Because, we could um, we could help you sell it.'

Balthier kept his eyes closed and swallowed down a smile. What Vaan actually meant was that he and his pig-tailed paramour would contrive to spirit his stolen goods away and either distribute them to the poor urchins of Low Town, or conversely, sell them to that geriatric, smoke weed addled Old Dalan for trifling amounts of Gil that the two altruistic brats would then use to clothe, shelter, and feed the little army of Rananastran orphans the two children called family.

'Is that right, hmm?' Balthier had drawled lazily, making himself more comfortable in his chair, 'And what if I say I intend to keep my loot for myself?' he asked mildly.

'I don't think pink pearls would suit you, Balthier.' Penelo opined sweetly and he could hear from her tone that she knew he was but teasing them.

Penelo, Balthier had long considered, was the sly one in the pair, much more so than her dear dim-witted Vaan.

'I'm deeply wounded,' Balthier told her with aggrieved dignity, 'I had it in mind to make myself a pair of pearl drop ear-rings, and now I am quite stricken with self-doubt and disappointment.'

'Oh no, not pearl drops,' Penelo cheerfully rejoined, 'You should make some big, dangly hoop ear-rings, out of these bangles. That would suit you _much_ better.' She brandished the bangles in question, which were as wide as her hand span. Balthier allowed himself a chuckle and shook his head indulgently.

'You brats are coming very close to insubordination,' he warned them, rubbing at his temple, 'Why is it that you are even here, taking up room in my ship, hmm?'

'Because it's your fault our airship fell into that crevasse in Bervenia.' Vaan reminded him promptly, 'You promised to help us make the Gil up to repay the owner.'

Balthier glanced at Fran, contriving to look annoyed, 'I still maintain that I made no such solemn oath,' He stated for the umpteenth time. 'And even if I did, a contract made while inebriated does not stand in law.'

It had been on his last shore leave excursion before this one that the Rabanastran duo had discovered him while in the process of downing pints, (and in so doing the pair exhibited a surprising aptitude for manipulation and cunning) and had thus proceeded to harass him into scratching out a written promise to let them tag-along with he and Fran until such time as they were no longer likely to have their knee-caps split by angry debt collectors and could pay off the owner of their borrowed (and subsequently crushed) airship.

'A contract signed, is a contract bound.'

Fran chastised him, as she had on the morning after when Balthier had been confronted with what he'd done. To this day he wasn't sure if Fran thought the whole thing highly amusing, or if she blamed him for Vaan and Penelo's continued presence.

'Bah,' Balthier flapped a hand in dismissal of the whole sorry affair, as he usually did.

'Fine,' he sighed. 'Take the loot, if you must.' He twisted around to glower at the children both, 'But I expect at least ten percent of the sale price to go towards repaying your debt. I'll not have the two of you taking up space in my ship forever.'

The two manipulative, scheming little street rats both nodded their head with earnest sincerity. 'Yes Balthier,' they said in unison but Balthier couldn't help but note that Penelo had already looped the coil of pearls about her neck and had donned the jangling bangles, which she was now admiring on the bend of her forearm.

Balthier sighed and turned back to face front. At this rate he and Fran would have to pay the debt off themselves just to be rid of the pair.

'Viera have a saying,' Fran murmured to him as she deftly piloted the Strahl around a gathering storm off the coast of Phon, 'translated it states: reap what you sow.'

Balthier scowled at his partner, well aware that she was laughing at him silently. He crossed his arms almost petulantly over his chest and slouched down in the co-pilot's chair even further, which was hardly befitting a man of his dignity, but bugger it, if a man couldn't sulk in his own ship, what was the point of it all?

'Thank you for that gem of Golmore wisdom, Fran.' he muttered mulishly deliberately and staunchly closing his eyes.

'I'm thrilled to see you again, too.' He added snippily but completely truthfully.

* * *

**709 O.V: High Summer Eve: The Queen's Chambers – Rabanastre**

Balthier had been drifting in and out of consciousness for the last hour and a half. He was shivering violently and his limbs glistened with sweat. Ashe had cast a number of curative spells upon him and this had eased his breathing and relaxed him into a deeper more restful slumber.

Nevertheless Balthier needed to be examined by a more expert healer than she, and Ashe dared not cast anything stronger than a Cura on him in case the bullet wound sealed over with the bullet still lodged inside him.

So now, with Balthier completely insensible, and having promised him aid, even against her better judgement, Ashe had very little time with which to actually acquire that aid before his presence was discovered and all manner of mayhem thus ensued.

Therefore Ashe now sat on her bed, back against her headboard, watching the first fingers of dawn paint the sky beyond her balcony and gnawing nervously on her bottom lip.

The pirate lay slightly angled on his good side with one hand lightly clamped around her ankle as she sat with her knees drawn up under her chin. His hand around her ankle seemed almost like a shackle; an emphatic reminder that she had made this man's fate her burden, at least for the span of seven days. Balthier's breath brushing against her hip, hot as the winds of the Westersand, tickled and she absently reached down to brush her fingers against the sodden, flattened sandy hair plastered to his head.

'Pirate,' she sighed frustrated, 'Why is it that you have such hold on me?'

Ashe studied Balthier intently as he lay beside her, helpless. In the seven months he had travelled in her party, from Rabanastre to the heart of Archades and on to Bahamut's fall, Balthier had always managed to maintain a veneer of elusiveness. He wasn't enigmatic like his partner Fran, or reserved like Basch, but there was always a sense that nothing that the party experienced while in battle or in rest really penetrated the impregnable façade the "leading man" had built up about himself. The only time Ashe had seen genuine emotion from Balthier had been when confronted with his maniacal father, first in Draklor, and then upon the apex of the Pharos, when his father had fallen to his hubris finally. Even so, Balthier had not so much as shed a tear for his father, or faltered in his stride thereafter.

At the time, when Ashe had been so torn with self-doubt and indecision, Balthier's seeming indifference in the face of such insurmountable odds and his absolute self-assurance, had been an enormous asset. An untouchable man in possession of an airship and a keen and unclouded mind; Balthier had been a pillar of strength with which Ashe chose to lean on increasingly as the battles wore on. Then when she'd thought he and Fran had died onboard Bahamut she had wept for him and her guilt for his loss had been deep indeed.

A year later, onboard the ancient airship of Feolthanus, Ashe had tried to talk to Balthier while watching the sunset on the deck. She had tried to feel out if there was any lingering affection between them, for she had believed that Balthier must have felt some affinity for her to risk so much in favour of her cause. She had wanted his advice also, regarding Al-Cid Margrace's advances, but for the most part, however, she had wanted his continued friendship.

Balthier had treated her like a stranger on that deck; he had seemed genuinely at a loss to understand her hidden insinuations and could only brag about his blasted Strahl. Ashe had known then that Balthier was an untouchable man indeed; as fickle as the changing seasons: like the wind he blew one way today, and the other on the morrow.

Now two years after that failed conversation, Balthier was here, in need, and demanding her help, trying to tug upon bonds of loyalty and friendship he himself had severed. She wondered at the man's selfishness, his callousness, but then chastised herself. In all likelihood Balthier was merely desperate to find Fran and was prepared to use any means available to him to do so. Ashe couldn't even blame him for it; she understood desperation well enough.

'Your Highness?'

Ashe was up and off the bed in a heartbeat as a woman's voice called from the outer doors of the chamber. 'My Lady, it is I Palia; you summoned me?'

'Palia, I am here. Are you alone?' Ashe moved swiftly to wrench closed the insect netting around the bed, although it would not do much to hide the presence of a man asleep between her sheets. She hurried swiftly over to the doors of the chamber as her most favoured lady-in-waiting entered the chamber.

'Yes my lady, I am alone, as you requested,' Palia stated as she came in, confusion writ large upon her dark olive features, 'Is there something the matter?'

Palia was Bhujerban by birth and upbringing and spoke with the musical accent of Dorstonis. She had served since childhood in the household of Marquis Ondore, Ashe's own uncle, and was something of a distant cousin to the Ondore family and, as Ashe's mother had been born of that line, to Ashe herself. Her uncle had offered Palia's services to Ashe as a coronation gift and Palia had been very pleased to take up such a high position of trust within the Dynast Queen's staff. It was Palia, beyond any other in the palace that Ashe felt she could trust with such a delicate matter.

'Yes,' she nodded her head, still chewing on her lip nervously, 'You could say that Palia.' Ashe stepped into her bed chamber and gestured to the bed.

Palia's eyes widened in total surprise, 'My Lady there is a man in your bed.'

Ashe couldn't help it, she laughed. 'Yes, I know. I found him in my bathroom.'

Cautiously and mostly due to curiosity Palia inched forward to peer through the gauze netting to look at Balthier. 'Oh my,' she breathed out in surprise turning to stare at Ashe with big, round dark eyes, 'Highness this man is very sick.'

'Yes,' Ashe hurried forward to pull back the netting from her bed once more, 'He has been shot and beaten. He told me the bullet was still lodged in the wound and as I have not found an exit wound, I'm forced to concede he must be telling the truth.'

Palia was staring at Ashe in bafflement, 'But Your Highness, who _is_ this man?'

Ashe sighed and flapped her hands irritably down upon Balthier, who remained oblivious, '_This, _Palia, is the sky pirate Balthier.'

Palia sucked in a sharp breath, 'The pirate?' Her dark eyes flitted down to the man in the bed, 'Ah, now I see.'

Nodding briskly, though Ashe was not sure at what, Palia leaned down to carefully roll Balthier onto his back. She hissed when she saw the state of his bullet wound. Ashe felt obscurely embarrassed.

'Palia, this is not….' She stopped herself and tried to work out what it was she wanted to say, 'This is not as it might appear.' She winced at her own ineloquence. 'This has never happened before. It is not as though Balthier regularly appears bleeding and feverish in my bathroom of a night.'

Palia actually grinned at this, 'I didn't imagine he would, my lady.' She chuckled, 'Your counsellors would pitch a fit if he did.'

Ashe did not see the humour in this statement. She bit down on her bottom lip hard enough to draw blood, 'Palia I need your help. I have promised Balthier that he can have secret sanctuary while he heals, and he needs the attentions of a healer far more skilled than I, but I cannot let anyone know he is here.' She shook her head in frustration, 'There would scandal.'

Palia eyed her curiously, 'Well,' she said judiciously after a moment, 'There would definitely be considerable interest.' Palia turned back to Balthier curiously, kneeling by the bed so she could very delicately examine the wound site. 'Especially because your uncle, the Marquis, has put out a bill of reward for anyone who knows the whereabouts of the pirate Balthier.'

'My uncle has done what?' Ashe was astounded.

Although it was not possible to offer full pardon to a career criminal who showed no sign of reforming, Dalmasca, Bhujerba, and even Archades, and their respective leaders, had essentially decided to turn a blind eye to the Strahl's movements in their territories as a courtesy and recognition of Balthier and Fran's aid in bringing peace to Ivalice's warning nations. So long as Balthier did not so flagrantly infringe upon the law as to make it impossible to ignore, Ashe had thought that her uncle, like she herself, would continue to turn the other cheek.

Palia looked up at her from where she had been examining the bruises and abrasions running up and down Balthier's right arm from shoulder to wrist. She looked somewhat furtive, as well she might.

'No one wanted to tell you, my lady, and the truth is that Rabanastre is not oft troubled by sky piracy so it matters not here – but you see my lady, there's outright war among the pirates and has been for months. Your Balthier was thought to be a casualty of that war.'

Ashe dropped to her knees next to Palia, resting one arm on the bedside, 'Why have I not heard this?' And how is it that a maid in my service knows more about foreign affairs than the sovereign of Dalmasca, Ashe thought to herself sourly. 'Why would it be kept from me?'

Palia looked a little awkward, 'I don't know your highness, I'm just a servant, I'm not privy to these high decisions,' she evaded with the artfulness of someone who is much more than a mere chamber maid. Ashe gave her a sceptical look.

'You appear to be privy to more than I, Palia. What does my uncle want with Balthier?'

Palia shook her head, 'That I truly do not know, my lady. I know that the pirate in-fighting has been damaging the passage of trade and freight in and out of Bhujerba for months, and it is much worse in the coastal regions of the Empire and Rozzaria.'

Palia said all this as if it were common knowledge, when in fact Ashe had been blissfully unaware that anything was out of sorts in Ivalice. Palia, perceptive enough to realise that the conversation was not to Ashe's liking struggled to bring the discussion to a satisfactory resolution; she smiled nervously:

'Perhaps your uncle simply wanted to find Balthier because he was once ally to you, and his death would grieve you? Certainly I'm sure he was only thinking of you when he advised your counsellors not to speak of his disappearance.'

'My uncle did what?' Ashe exploded rising to her feet and pacing swiftly as she rubbed her lips with a finger. 'How dare uncle Halim do such a thing? I am ruler here, not he. My counsellors should answer to me and me alone.'

Palia watched Ashe with tense expression. Her Highness Ashelia was known to possess a legendarily fierce temper. Almost unconsciously Palia moved to protect the insensate man in the bed, should Ashe's wrath spill over into actual explosions. Taking a deep breath Ashe swallowed down her anger and eased the tension from her shoulders, scrabbling for self-control and lady-like deportment.

'Very well,' she stated stiffly, 'none of this can be helped now.' Spoken from between clenched teeth, the statement lacked the comforting tone Ashe might have hoped to impart.

Eventually Ashe turned back to the bed, 'Palia can I entrust Balthier's care to you? I will give you leave to be absent from court.' Ashe waved a hand at Balthier's prone form, 'He's an arrogant, conceited man, but he is not without honour and decency. He should give you no trouble if you tell him I have bid you tend him.'

Palia's lips quivered in an odd little smile and she rose from the bedside and bowed formerly to Ashe. 'I shall tend him well, my lady. Have no fear.' Palia's brown eyes were thoughtful, 'May I summon for a large wicker basket, and a porter, your highness?'

Ashe frowned, 'Why for?'

Palia's smile was crooked at the edges and her dark eyes were sly, 'It will not be comfortable for him, but I think I can keep him asleep and thus unaware for the journey, for I had thought that transporting the pirate inside a large laundry basket with these soiled sheets,' she gestured to Ashe's bed linens, 'might be the best way to get him from the palace without anyone being the wiser.'

Ashe's eyes grew wide and a very clear mental image of the leading man stuffed into a laundry hamper with yesterdays dirty linens floated before her eyes. Ashe couldn't help it, a burst of laughter escaped her lips, swiftly followed by more of the same, and she tried to suppress gales of mirth with a hand to her mouth, but all to no avail.

'Oh good gods,' Ashe gasped out, 'I wish he was awake to hear you say that, Palia.'

Eyes bright she tried to smother her giggles and only experienced partial success, 'Make him ready however you can, Palia.' Ashe took a deep breath and threw back her shoulders, lifting her head and assuming her regal airs, 'I will summon a basket and a strong servant to bear it hence.'

Impishly Ashe couldn't help looking back upon Balthier's helpless, sleeping form. Her smile was not exactly pleasant; Hah, she thought rather pettily, that will serve you right, pirate. Ask for a queen's help and be taken out with her dirty linens.

* * *

**708 O.V: High Spring Tide**

'W –what is that?'

Penelo's dismay awoke Balthier from a pleasantly dreamless slumber and he opened his eyes just as Fran turned the Strahl into a gentle downward arc starboard.

'Is that an airship?' Vaan poked his head through the gap between the navigator and pilot's seats to gape out of the main screen windows. They were passing over anonymous steppe land, a veldt of multi-tonal green, but from the depths of that wavering green ocean a large plume of black smoke engulfed the husk of a downed vessel. Balthier sat up in his chair.

'What's left of one,' he murmured sharing a sideways look with Fran.

'Do we investigate?' she asked him. Balthier nodded once, in sharp affirmation.

'I think I know this ship,' he said quietly as he called up topographic charts stored in the Strahl's sensors and looked for a likely spot for Fran to set his girl down safely. 'I think it is Tyree's ship.'

'The smuggler from Iona Isle,' Fran nodded having recognised also the modest, green and vaguely bug-like airship.

Balthier nodded, thinking. 'Speck's men were in port,' he told Fran as she weighed anchor and the Strahl came to dock not fifty feet from the downed craft, 'One of the Company approached me with another offer,' Balthier felt his lip curl, 'tried to slip me one of those damned coins when he thought me too far gone to know the game.'

Fran's ears twitched, both at once and she cast him a keen look, 'You took it up, not?'

'Of course not,' Balthier commanded the Strahl's doors to open, 'But I wonder just how many poor bastards have, and come to regret it.'

'Who's Speck?' It was Vaan who asked the question.

'No one you want to meet,' Balthier told him tiredly as he gestured for the two youths to precede Fran and he out of the Strahl. The smell of burning components and glossair oil was particularly astringent as the four of them alighted from the Strahl.

'I don't like the looks of this,' Balthier murmured to Fran and she nodded.

'Our weapons,' she glanced back at Penelo with a slight nod and the girl immediately ran back up the Strahl's ramp to fetch them. Vaan sidled closer, eyes dancing from in one direction and another scanning the empty grasslands for hidden threats.

'You think this might be a trap?' he asked sounding both anxious and excited. Penelo clattered back down the Strahl's ramp then, over burdened with Balthier's Fomalhaut, Fran's great bow and Vaan's Deathbringer sword. Penelo's own staff was slung across her back.

Balthier checked the gun over and loaded some shot, 'I rather doubt there's a horde of brigands hidden in the grasses,' he admitted dryly, 'but a man only needs to be wrong once and he has an eternity of rest to regret his lack of diligence.'

'Agreed,' Fran plucked her bow's string and nodded as it sung a clear note like a tuning fork through the quiet air, 'Balthier and I shall enter, you and Penelo scout.'

Neither of the children argued, which stood both as a testament for their respect for Fran's authority versus that of Balthier, and also their growing maturity. Vaan headed off in a wide arc around the nose of the ship, while Penelo moved off competently to the rear.

Balthier sighed and hitched his shoulders, 'Ladies choice,' he gestured to Fran, 'Would you like to precede or shall I?'

Fran's nose twitched, 'I smell death on the wind.'

Balthier arched an eyebrow, 'Right, well, I'll go in ahead then.'

He took the lead up the ramp of Tyree's ship, the Emerald Duchess. The hatch had been forced open and torn from its hinges and great clouts of dark smoke rose from the ships interior, hot and stinging with burning embers. Balthier waved Fran back as he stepped into the ships interior. Of course, despite his attempts at chivalry Fran was right at his back as he kicked open the dented door to the main cabin. Really there were times when it was damned difficult to be a leading man when his partner refused to play her part properly.

The interior of the central cabin, the Emerald Duchess being of similar design to the Strahl, was a wreck. Power relays disgorged their wiring from holes in the wall casings and the flight console was utterly destroyed, spitting sparks into the hot, smoke laden air.

Tyree, the stout, affable, cheerfully low key part time smuggler from the sleepy Iona Isle, was still seated in his pilot's seat, which had been twisted right around to face away from the shattered main window screens of the Emerald Duchess.

Balthier sighed, suddenly tired beyond belief, and approached Tyree's unmoving form gingerly. Tyree's hands had been stapled to the arm rests of his chair by long nails driven through the flesh of his palms. This had been done presumably to stop Tyree from offering much in the way of resistance as someone, or perhaps a great many someones', had shot the man twice with a small calibre weapon straight through both eyes. Blood and thicker things had dried in viscous runnels of dark fluid down his cheeks and clotted under the man's double chins like hideous tears.

Pushed into Tyree's gaping open jaws his killer or killers had pushed one of the dark disk coins with tag, which Balthier had been offered in port two nights ago, under the dead man's tongue.

Fran shifted behind him, he sensed her presence like a change in the air currents of this stifling charnel house of a former airship.

'This is the Company's work.' She told him unnecessarily. 'Something must be done; else all good pirates shall share Tyree's fate.'

Balthier rose to his feet and brushed off his trousers. He looked down at the corpse of a good man for a long, quiet moment.

'Something will be done, Fran.' He told her calmly, 'and we shall do it.'


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Three: 709 O.V. High Summer's Day – Rabanastre**

It was High Summer's Day and as such a national holiday in Dalmasca. In a week's time the Rains would come sweeping in from the south east to flood the Giza Plains and the year would officially turn towards the long crawl of winter. Admittedly winter in Dalmasca was not the harsh and barren coldness of certain more distant parts of Ivalice but it was still, officially, the last and best day of summer, and thus the people celebrated.

Dalmasca's Queen did not have the luxury of a day's festivities however. Ashe was not sure there was any feast day, rest day, or religious holiday wherein she was not expected to be 'working' – if one could call existing as reigning monarch work.

Today there had been one hundred and fifty-five petitioners. Some were citizens of the city who wanted to make complaint against one of the Guilds or a ruling made by the Rabanastran Council, others were nobles wanting arbitration regarding land rights, or Ashe's permission to make a lucrative marriage for their son or daughter.

Today had also brought to her audience chamber a most unusual petitioner; Ashe had been petitioned by an Archadian artisan, a man who had stayed in the city when the rest of the Imperial settlers withdrew under the edict of Lord Larsa and upon Dalmasca's liberation. This man, who now ran a small carpentry shop, had chosen to stay and make a life for himself in Dalmasca as a common citizen; considering the less than hospitable culture towards Imperials that still maintained in Rabanastre this was quite remarkable on its own. However the man's petition was even stranger.

This man had wanted the right to sue for Dalmascan citizenship and the right to marry a Rabanastran woman. The woman, fascinatingly, had been widowed in the invasion of Dalmasca by the Empire, yet had nevertheless fallen in love with an Imperial who she claimed could not be a better father to her five children had he been their true blood sire. This man and woman's joint petition had been quite the spectacle and had livened up a hot, dull afternoon.

Ashe had signed the right of citizenry for the man, on the proviso that the man give up all claim to Imperial citizenship. The man had seemed happy to do so and walked from her audience chamber with one of his adoring step-children in his arms and his soon to be Dalmasca wife at his side.

It was food for thought, Ashe considered now as she went through various manifestos, new bills of law, and suggestions for new members of the soon to be re-established parliament of Dalmasca.

'Chancellor?' Ashe spoke up as her quill danced over parchment and she readied her wax seal for printing on the page, 'Approximately how many Archadians remained in Dalmasca after the liberation?'

Her Chancellor, a man called Vintnor, who had fled to Bhujerba directly after the Imperial invasion but remained in close contact with the resistance even in exile, looked up from where he had been sorting further papers awaiting her signature.

'Difficult to say, your grace, in recent months, since amicable trading relations have been established between Dalmasca and the Empire, there has been an influx of Imperial citizens looking to either establish mercantile bases in Dalmasca or temporary residences.'

Ashe nodded thoughtfully, glancing over the finer points of a new tariff on stall trading hours, 'It is funny how the world turns, Vintnor. It was not so long ago that Dalmasca was under the boot heel of the Empire and I was a dead woman. Now there are Archadians willing to bend the knee to me and call me their Queen.'

Vintnor took his time in replying, as he was not sure if his queen expected response or was merely making a rhetorical observation. 'The Ivalice of today is not as it used to be,' he said carefully, as was his wont, 'Where once kingdoms were inviolate, now people move as they will; trading citizenship for their own advantage.'

Ashe looked up at him, quill stilling on the page, 'What do you mean?'

Vintnor once again considered his words with care, 'This is a new era, one of unprecedented change; a period of flux, if you will.' Vintnor, a man in his late fifties who had seen eight Dalmascan princes die and a Dalmascan princess rise from the dead to restore her kingdom, gestured airily to encapsulate all and nothing at once.

'Go on,' Ashe put her quill down folding her hands neatly over the parchment as she sat in her carven chair at her council table. Vintnor nodded and cleared his throat.

'Under the Lord Larsa, for the first time in seventy years, the Empire has halted her voracious expansionism. In fact, if the secession of the Landis territories go ahead as is planned, it will be the first time in a generation that the Empire will actually start to contract, not expand.'

Ashe nodded, 'A development that can surely only be for the good of all, including Archadia.'

'Perhaps, your grace,' Vintnor sounded unconvinced, 'But majesty, Landis is not as Dalmasca was. We were under Imperial dominion for a relatively short space of time, in which we were able to maintain much of our old ways and customs. Landis, an acquisition of the Empire for fifteen years, has been almost completely assimilated. In some respects Highness, there is no longer such a place as Landis.'

Ashe thought on this and her thoughts inevitably travelled to Basch and his brother Noah, better known as the hated hound of Empire Gabranth – the man who murdered her father. Both brothers had been sons of Landis, and yet one had become a sword of Dalmasca and the other a servitor of the Empire that had laid waste to their homeland.

'Landis was betrayed from within and without, if I recall.' Ashe said thinking back. Although she had been just a child at the time Ashe knew her history well. Monarchical elements within Landis, not happy with the new Republic rule, had conspired with the Empire to bring down the nation. 'I suppose that made a large difference; a people divided amidst themselves cannot offer much resistance against an external oppressor.'

'It could also be said, that, unlike in Dalmasca,' Vintnor added in his ponderous, thoughtful way, 'there were many of Landis who welcomed the Archadians and relished the profit they could make as part of the Empire.'

'And many therefore who will not look kindly on being once again of Landis and Landis alone.' Ashe continued the thought, chewing on a nail.

Ashe knew that there were many people in Dalmasca who had once been born of Landis, and likely three times as many again who had made homes and lives for themselves in Archadia hence. For the first time Ashe wondered, had anyone actually asked those people if they wanted to return to a kingdom so utterly destroyed over a decade ago that her people had been scattered to the four winds of Ivalice?

'I suppose a man makes his home where he lays his hat,' she spoke musingly, 'For the common man matters of statecraft are both arcane and irrelevant. It is enough to have a home and food to eat.'

Vintnor almost smiled, 'I think all men care for statecraft, your Highness, as it is often the common man who bares the brunt of all wars,' his voice was almost gentle before he cleared his throat and continued in more formal manner, 'but to continue our discussion, if I may, your grace?'

He paused and Ashe nodded waving him on. Vintnor was her highest ranking official because she liked and trusted him for good counsel and she would be fool indeed not to listen to him.

'Yes, we would hear your thoughts.'

'Thank you, Majesty. What I would say on the matter is that the recent wars, the loss of Nabradia, the many refugees that once took refuge upon the slopes of Mount Bur-Omisace and now wander Ivalice as vast tribes of nomads, these matters, coupled with this period of unparalleled freedom of movement between nations, has changed Ivalice in ways we are only just beginning to understand.'

Ashe frowned at her Chancellor, 'You speak of this freedom of passage as a bad thing, and yet, as a trading nation, such freedom of commerce and people is essential to Dalmasca's survival and prosperity.'

Vintnor shook his head more musingly than in any sort of judgement. 'We seem to have a new breed of man in these days,' he said. 'A breed of free men; men who spend their allegiance as they would spend their Gil, _carefully_, placing only so much stock in kings and queens as they feel will best suit their needs one moment to the next.'

Vintnor shook his head again, pale eyes looking into a middle distance, which was as ever the respite of the older generation looking back to the safety of times gone by. 'These are men who have seen ancient dynasties fall to dust and no longer believe in the sanctity and safety of national borders.'

Ashe rubbed a finger over her lips, 'We have met such a man,' she half smiled, 'He called himself a sky pirate – and he was certainly a man who held no reverence for the divine rights of kings or queens.'

Vintnor nodded, 'Many of these men take to that lifestyle, which is why the predations of such a menace as sky pirates grow ever greater.' Vintnor stopped when he saw the unguarded look upon Ashe's face upon such disparagement of pirates. He cleared his throat again and amended his words. 'Some of these free men are simply wanderers and do more good than ill, but others, for whatever reason, begin to prey on the nations they so disdain.'

Vintnor looked at Ashe hard, 'Such men, and women as they sometimes are, could be a great threat to institutions such as the Dynast monarchy: for if a man has no need of a nation he has no need for a monarch.'

Ashe nodded, 'Of this I am well aware.' she swallowed down a wry smile and bit her tongue to stop from saying more than she aught.

Oh yes, she was very aware of how much of a threat free men and sky pirates could pose to a queen. The biggest threat to Ashe personally had only this morning been smuggled out of the palace in a laundry hamper, after all.

'Nevertheless,' Ashe said briskly chasing such whimsical thoughts from her head, 'We owe a portion of Dalmasca's present freedom to the good offices of two such free spirits of Ivalice, both self-proclaimed sky pirates. We find it hard to condemn all such men,' she paused thinking on Fran, 'and _women_ without due cause.'

Ashe tapped her fingers on the table-top and watched her Chancellor keenly from under her eyelashes as she feigned interest in the documents spread out before her. It seemed to Ashe that Vintnor was giving serious consideration to some weighty matter. Ashe bit her lip on a smile and waited.

'My Lady?' Vintnor cleared his throat awkwardly.

'Yes, Chancellor?' Ashe looked up, the picture of innocent interest.

Vintnor looked somewhat uncomfortable, 'I am afraid I have some news,' he paused again once more to consider his words, 'Not a matter that is of pressing importance to Dalmasca's sovereignty but one that is perhaps of interest to your grace in person.'

Ashe gazed impassively back at her disconcerted Chancellor, 'You are to tell us that the pirate Balthier and his partner Fran, once our own dear allies in Dalmasca's liberation, are missing and presumed dead, are you not, Chancellor?'

Vintnor's expression was a picture; priceless in its almost comical surprise. Ashe felt it necessary to rise from the table and go to stand by one of the windows in the council chamber, turning her back to her Chancellor so that he could not see her triumphant grin. Hah, that would teach her Chancellor against trying to withhold vital information from her in future.

'Ah – your Grace?' Vintnor stumbled over his words, 'How, ahem, may I inquire as to how it is that you were already privy to this news?'

Ashe worked hard to keep her grin from her face as she turned around to face her Chancellor with her most haughty and regal look upon her face.

'Did you presume, my lord Chancellor, that I, the Dynast Queen, was dependent solely on yourself for information?'

'I….ahem,…..I…'

Vintnor looked so wretchedly wrong footed that Ashe took pity on him. She graced him with a thin smile.

'Although we do not need it, we would appreciate your information all the same, Lord Chancellor.' Ashe stated with no little mendacity. 'Where as, of course, we grieve for the possible loss of those who were once ally to us, we wonder why it is that this information was deemed important enough for my own counsellors to contrive to withhold it from their sovereign Queen?'

Ashe fixed her most determinedly steady gaze upon her chancellor, a look which the damned pirate had once dubbed: ''the princess' basilisk impression''. Whereas it had ever failed to incite more than amusement from Balthier, such an implaccable look rarely failed to petrify her council members and Ashe used it judiciously to great effect in her day to day life.

Vintnor was lost and he knew it. Sighing dejectedly the man sat down upon the chair at the table facing her and Ashe returned to her own seat, settled herself demurely, hands clasped over the table top, and waited for her Chancellor to confide all. It did not take long as the older man wilted under her unblinking regard. As she listened intently Ashe could not help but feel rather satisfied all things considered.

Now, if Ashe could just find means to make the pirate sing like a bird she would consider this a very productive holiday indeed.

* * *

**708 O.V: High Spring Tide**

Balthier used a scrap of torn upholstery from one of the Emerald Duchess' passenger seats to ease the coin and tag free of Tyree's mouth and wrap it securely without touching flesh to metal. He stuffed the tightly wrapped bundle into one of his belt pouches and walked the length of the little ship to the rear compartments.

'Damn it all,' Balthier came to a stop in the threshold of the main cabin as his gaze alighted on the body of Tyree's wife, whose name he could not remember, blast him. She had clearly been thrown down onto the bed before some cowardly bastard had shot her once in the chest. A star burst of brilliant scarlet had congealed over her white gown and her eyes stared perpetually up through the ceiling of the cabin, expression frozen in a twisted grimace of pain and fear.

'Filthy bloody bastards,' Balthier continued to cuss as he quick stepped into the room and deftly closed the woman's eyes with two gentle fingers. It was perhaps small mercy to note that the woman had not been defiled or molested either before or after death. There was also no coin or tag for Tyree's wife that Balthier could find. He did not know if that was for the good or ill.

A triptych miniature portrait in a triple oval tortoiseshell frame caught his attention as he turned to leave the room. Balthier snatched it up from the bedside table. One tiny portrait was of Tyree, one of his wife, but the last one made Balthier's blood run cold. He was out of the cabin like a shot, still clasping the triptych picture frame in his hands.

'Fran!'

He called forgetting in his haste that she was out distracting the children while he was supposed to be removing the bodies. He was moving so fast he overshot the doorway to the small second cabin at the back of the ship and had to stretch out an arm to arrest his own forward motion before he smacked into the rear wall.

Balthier stared into the last cabin, a tiny renovated storage hold, covered in cheerful lurid bright pink paint and over-flowing with ruffles and lace; a typical little girl's domain (or so Balthier imagined). He entered almost in trepidation. Balthier had seen any number of vile things in his time, and murdered children were but a fraction of the depravity of hume nature he had been subjected to, but that did not mean one became inured to such horrors with each exposure – or at least Balthier never had.

Therefore it was both relief and greater punishment to him that as Balthier stepped into the nauseatingly pink room he did not find a dead little body sprawled across her lace canopy bunk. The question remained however, if Tyree's daughter was not here, then where was she? Surely even the bloody Company would not stoop so low as to kill a man and take his child?

Balthier looked down at the miniature portrait of a little girl, maybe nine or ten years old. Ebony skinned with a wild halo of darkest black hair frothing around her head the little girl's grin almost encompassed the entirety of the picture. The smile sparked a memory in Balthier of a cheeky, lively little madam at her father's side, fearlessly traversing the Mosphoran Highwaste with a sack of her father's contraband goods over one shoulder. He tapped the portrait, which was a damned fine likeness.

'Jassalinda,' he murmured dredging the name from the depths of his memory. Balthier had a vague recollection of letting the little scamp pick his pocket while he came to a businessman's agreement over supplies with her father. He only stopped her when she grew over bold and tried to cut the pouch from his belt. He had given her ten Gil for effort and a honey cake. Fran had told him he was only inviting trouble by being so indulging of a thief child.

'Bugger all,' Balthier breathed out through his teeth. Did the depravations of Speck and his men know no ends? Even the Judiciary of the Empire drew the line when it came to children. If Speck had the girl she would be better off as dead as her parents. Balthier stared sightlessly at the picture of the child for a long moment before turning away to leave the room.

A collection of pieces of cheap paper tacked to a board drilled into the wall of the little cabin by the door caught his attention and Balthier studied Jassalinda's personal mark hunters board with interest.

The board was filled with the sorts of odds and ends a little child might choose to collect, mingled with a sizable collection of headhunters bounty reward bills for a wide selection of his fellow sky pirates and men of free allegiance. His own warrant for arrest and that of Fran's had been prominently displayed in the very centre of the board. Enshrining the caricature of Balthier's own grinning face a girlish hand had drawn a wobbly heart in bright pink ink.

Balthier swore with feeling and stared down at the smiling triptych of father, mother, and child; a family now shattered beyond repair.

There was nothing for it, Balthier thought almost petulantly as he shoved the picture frame up inside the tight confines of his leather vest where it would at least be secure until he could stow it somewhere safe in the Strahl. Had he not seen the girl's little notice board he might have been able to walk away from all this, as was the sensible thing to do, but now, well, the leading man had a standard to live up to and he couldn't let his adoring public down, could he now?

'Bloody hell,' he muttered mournfully, 'This hero lark is going to get me killed.'

Without a backward glance, because that was not Balthier's way, he turned sharply on his heel and swiftly left the macabre shell of the Emerald Duchess to seek out Fran and the brats. They had a little girl to rescue and all manner of bloody retribution to mete out and therefore this dilly-dallying served no purpose. It was time to make for Balfonheim and call an old fashioned Muster.

As Balthier strode over the steppes in pursuit of Fran, he found his fists clenching and his heart pounding in a mixture of rage and anticipation. It occurred to Balthier that he was actually looking with relish upon the thought of putting two bullets through the eyes of _Mister_ Speck.

'You will pay for this, you slimy bastard.' Balthier promised Speck, a man he hated almost more than any other man living or dead, 'You will pay even if I have to hunt you down to the gates of hell itself.'

* * *

**709 O.V. High Summer's Day – Rabanastre**

It was never a good omen, Ashe decided as she entered the small, mostly disregarded lodging on the far edges of the royal estate, to walk through a door and be greeted with the sound of a man screaming.

Without further ado Ashe picked up her feet and ran through the building that had been fondly dubbed "little Palace" when it had been built to house her eight brothers now lost. She moved in a blur of motion ignoring her surroundings in her haste to reach the back room where the screaming came from.

The sounds of a man in desperate pain were not new to her; Ashe had lived barracked in sewers with men of the resistance: she had seen some terrible wounds in her time. Nevertheless the grunts of pain, the little growls of a man trying to bite down on further screams, and the scent of blood and sweat, returned Ashe to a time and place she never wanted to revisit. She almost stopped outside the closed door of the former solarium and fled altogether.

Still the Dynast Queen was made of sterner stuff than that and, squaring her shoulders, Ashe opened the door and stepped boldly into the room. The solarium had been built to be her dead brothers' playroom, long before her birth. It was a room of airy lightness, soft curves and sweeping columns. It was a room meant for leisure, pleasure, and relaxation but today it looked like the sick room of an army barracks after a vicious and unsuccessful campaign.

Ashe felt no embarrassment to see that, save for a beige sheet pulled across his hips for modesty's sake, Balthier was completely naked. No one would look upon the pirate's sweat slicked flesh, pale and alternately flushed with blood loss and fever burn, and feel either desire or shyness right now.

No, like as not, the only emotion to be invoked would be pity. Balthier had not been exaggerating when he had said he had been brought very low indeed.

The long length of Balthier's body was tensed and arched in pain as Palia swabbed at his weeping bullet wound and Balthier threw his head back like a bridled war chocobo, a wooden stick clenched between his teeth lest he bite through his own tongue. His soft guttural mewls of pain, escaping a raw throat, were thusly muffled as Palia used a small bladed knife to cut away spoiled flesh from the wound site.

Ashe was appalled as crimson swathes of blood rushed like water onto the pile of already filthy bedding under Balthier and she moved swift as a thought to drop down on her knees on Balthier's opposite side.

'Palia what are you doing?'

Her lady-in-waiting looked up, sweat and anxiety pinching her brow. She seemed relieved that Ashe had found means to escape her constant guarded vigil and come to the Little Palace. 'My lady, I know not what is wedged within him, but it is not a bullet. I see no way of removing the object, save to make a wider wound.'

'What do you mean, not a bullet?' Without thought for the patient, Ashe reached over to pull open the puckered edges of the weeping wound until she could look inside its meaty red centre to see the dull gleam of something dark and metallic imbedded in Balthier's flesh.

'My lady, please,' Palia looked grim, 'You must hold him while I attempt to pull it out. Whatever it is can only do more harm if it remains.'

'Very well,' Ashe nodded sharply. This would not be the first time she had assisted in restraining a soldier while others set bones or pulled shrapnel from the deep, soft cavities of the flesh.

She moved swiftly around behind Balthier who looked as if he neither knew, nor cared, what the two women were about so long as someone brought surcease to his pain. She arranged herself so that her legs came around his torso from behind and she could lean him back against her chest. She reached down and around him to clasp his wrists in each of her hands and braced herself.

Briefly she met Balthier's eyes, which rolled wildly with suppressed panic. No one would deny that Balthier was a physically brave man, but no man was a mountain and pain was pain - and Balthier had been in pain for far too long already.

'Do it now,' she commanded Palia knowing that delaying only served to prolong Balthier's suffering. Palia sucked in a breath, wiped off the snub blade on her own garments, and went to work.

Balthier reared back, spine bowing, head going back so that his skull ground into Ashe's collarbone painfully. Every muscle in his body from the tendons in his neck pulled to sharp relief, to his curled toes, went absolutely rigid. Balthier's face contorted in rage and agony as Palia dug into his flesh with her snub knife and Balthier's almost bestial snarls were no less heart-wrenching for the stick in his mouth that acted as a gag.

'Be brave bhadra, be brave.' Ashe only realised belatedly that Palia was speaking in Bhujerban, but it did not really matter for she had her hands full holding Balthier still, or at least stopping him from bucking so wildly that Palia's knife would cut into the wrong place.

Physically Ashe could not match Balthier for brute strength or endurance (though she was at least as good an armed combatant as he). It was simply a matter of male physiologic advantage. Balthier was bigger and stronger than Ashe; nevertheless Ashe had experience of fighting those bigger and stronger than herself (truthfully, at just over five feet it would be hard for her to find an opponent smaller than she, lest she wage war on the Nu Mou or the Moogles).

Utilising the training Vossler had granted her with, Ashe bore her weight down on Balthier's wrists, leaning over his body from behind and bearing him down to pin him against her. Palia was still murmuring soothingly to Balthier in Bhujerban as she carefully, skilfully, eased the strange metal disk from out of his flesh and Balthier began to calm down, growing resigned to the pain at least.

Now that Balthier was no longer lashing about like a Tchita serpent, or making those heart-rending mewls of pain, Ashe concentrated on casting cure spells to ease him a little without interfering with Palia's work. Balthier moaned like an animal caught in a hunter's trap and turned his face into her neck. He spat the stick from his mouth and Ashe shivered as she felt his hot breath against her throat; for one terrifying moment Ashe thought Balthier might bite into her neck in distraction.

'Balthier, hear me; it will be alright. I promise.' She murmured even though she knew he was not in any state to understand her.

Palia had pared away layers of Balthier's flesh and now used her fingers to dig into the meat and pick out the round, coin-like piece of metal that had been buried so deep inside him. Balthier shuddered so violently Ashe worried he might be suffering convulsions. She whispered another cure spell and let go of his wrists to rub circles over his back, her restraining hold coming to resemble more of an embrace.

Balthier shifted with sudden, swift violence. His arms locked around Ashe with vice-like strength and she had to resist the almost instinctive desire to fight free of him. She could feel the strength in his hands; the corded muscle clenching in his arms. He was stronger than he looked and he could hurt her without even meaning to. Ashe almost clucked her tongue at herself in chastisement. She was being ridiculous. Balthier was likely completely unaware of what he was doing. He clutched at her just as he had bit down so tightly on the stick earlier; it was merely reflex. Ashe knew she was nothing more than a lifeline keeping him grounded in his flesh during this moment of miserable pain.

Relaxing deliberately Ashe began to rock him gently whispering cure spells, as Balthier shivered helplessly in pain, arms locked around her and his face buried against her neck. Time seemed to play strange tricks on Ashe then, as she held Balthier in her arms, acutely conscious of his weight against her, the almost painful grip of his arms around her, the rank scent of his sweat and blood and sickness thick in her nose. It seemed to Ashe that time moved very slowly and that even Palia seemed distant and remote; much as if it was only she and Balthier alone like this.

Ashe stroked her fingers over the sodden hair at the nape of his neck and she could feel the flicker of Balthier's eyelashes against the skin of her collarbone as he squeezed his eyes closed and nuzzled his face into her neck as if hoping to block out the sensation of Palia's fingers inside his wound.

'Shhh,' Ashe whispered, even though Balthier was not making a sound, 'It will be alright. I give you my word.'

It was then that, finally, Palia released a triumphant hiss of air through her teeth and wrested free the dark, flat metal disk from Balthier's body. She cleaned it efficiently on her soiled clothes and held it to the light as Balthier subsided into exhausted slumber still pressed against Ashe's body, his arms hanging like loose chains around her.

'My lady – look at this.' Palia's expression was one of utterly mystification as she handed over the disk. 'What make you of it, your Highness, for it seems to me that this is a Gil coin.'

'It can't be,' Ashe reached for the battered piece of metal and squinted at it in the light.

To her horror she realised that Palia was exactly correct. Although horribly battered, scratched, and etched with Balthier's blood and flesh, Ashe could make out the familiar sigil of Faram that marked all Galtean coinage.

'This…this is….' Ashe sucked in a sharp breath as she realised that the object that had been driven at least four inches into Balthier's side was a single one thousand Gil coin; the highest single denomination coin that could be struck from here to Archadia and back to Rozzaria. The gold plated silver Mythril disk was tarnished almost black but there was no mistaking it now that her mind had confirmed what her eyes could scarce believe possible.

Someone had deliberately forced a Gil coin right into Balthier's body and very nearly so deep that it popped out the other side. Ashe looked down at the sick pirate unconscious against her shoulder in stunned amazement.

'He said it was a bullet.' She shook her head in utter incomprehension. 'How is it even possible that such a thing could be done?' she asked, and even as she did she knew she did not truly want an answer.

Palia had already begun to treat the wound in Balthier's side; now that it was safe to use strong magicks to heal him with the foreign body removed from his flesh. Ashe whispered her own curative spells as Palia cleaned the wound competently and began to prepare bandages.

'He will scar,' Palia stated quietly, 'but the wound will be in good company.' She looked up at Ashe, 'I have seen soldiers return from battle with fewer wounds than he.'

Ashe rolled her eyes, 'Soldiers wear armour; this man flounces into full battle in nothing but his shirt sleeves.'

This was not strictly true, even Balthier was not that reckless when it came to his own health, but he was not a man to wear plate mail or heavy armour. Then again, considering he was once a Judge, Ashe supposed that might explain his aversion to full body armour.

Palia accepted Ashe's cutting sarcasm at face value however and nodded distractedly. 'I have already treated the shackle wounds on his wrists and ankles; the flesh had caught infection but I have cleansed it now.'

Palia pushed a strand of dark hair from her face as she documented Balthier's catalogue of ailments, 'His ankle was badly sprained, but it is healed now, more or less. Three fingers on his left hand are broken and I have splinted them. He had many shards of glass embedded under the bruises and cuts across his body – healing draughts have forced them out. I believe two, maybe more, ribs are cracked or broken.'

Ashe's hand moved on its own accord to cup the back of Balthier's head. She almost wanted to shield him from such words, which of course was ludicrous. Balthier was unconscious and even had he been awake, he must already know how badly hurt he was. Ashe was also not sure why she should feel so protective of him to begin with – he had essentially blackmailed her into aiding him, after all.

Palia shrugged releasing a tired sigh and continued her recitation of Balthier's woes, 'His fever will take time to leave him; his body is ravaged not just by injury but by the feat of endurance he has forced on himself simply to arrive here to beg your aid.'

Ashe nodded, 'It surprises me not. Balthier is a man who believes himself immortal and seems determined to tempt fate with such a boast.'

Palia looked upon Balthier's limp form held in Ashe's arms. She looked up at Ashe quite solemnly.

'He looks very mortal to me, my lady.'

Ashe looked down on Balthier's sleeping face; his head lolling on her shoulder. She watched the jump of his eyelashes and noted the dark hollows caused by pain and mistreatment like purpled smudges around the sockets of his eyes. There was not a trace of his arrogant smirk on his mouth and the features of his face seemed to lose some vital spark in repose. He looked so unlike the imperturbable, infuriatingly conceited man Ashe had never quite come to know that it made her feel unaccountably sad.

'Yes,' Ashe agreed, almost thoughtlessly running one finger down his disordered sideburn, 'He does, and nothing could pain me more, I think, than to see the leading man dragged down to the level of we mere mortals.'


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Four: 708 O.V: High Spring Tide**

Balthier took the Strahl's helm again for the journey to Balfonheim; Fran returning to her usual place as navigator (not that Balthier didn't know the route to the port with his eyes closed). This was in no way a slight against Fran's abilities. Fran was an excellent pilot; Balthier had taught her himself and thus she could not fail to be exemplary, but her manner of flying was quite different to his own. Ultimately it came down to respect; Fran had too much respect for the Strahl to push the old girl, and Balthier wouldn't know how to fly if he couldn't push his best girl to her limits and beyond.

So while the flight to Balfonheim would have taken Fran about eight hours, Balthier in contrast would consider taking five hours a tardy journey, and proceeded to fly as if the entire Rozzarian military pavilion was on his tail. Of course his manner of flying did keep Fran in work; he burned out auxiliary glossair conduits at an alarming rate and the number of times some antiquated component or another had blown its fuse within his best girl's innards would have made a lesser man think either on upgrading the ship for a newer model or learning to fly a little more conservatively.

'You shall summon a muster?' Fran asked him as he decided to fly right through a cloud squall because it would add too much journey time to go around it.

'Hmm, I would be amazed if one isn't in progress already.' He banked the ship hard to the port side and heard something in the rear of the Strahl come loose with a crash. He tilted his head back and raised his voice to reach the bowels of the ship.

'Vaan – make sure everything is secure back there.'

He thought he heard some manner of muffled complaint from back in the ship but ignored it. The children had been a bit subdued after they had cremated Tyree and his wife; the news that a little girl was missing had particularly affected them. On the plus side a subdued Vaan and Penelo made for considerably less annoyance and distraction for Balthier himself. He pushed down on the Strahl's flight levers and flicked a switch to force a little more speed from the engines.

'Do you seek to force the muster to declare this Mister Speck fair game?'

Fran did not chastise him for putting strain on the Strahl's delicate machinery. She knew better than to waste the breath. He'd been treating his Strahl abominably for years; even longer than he had been flying with Fran at his side. His best girl had always come through for him in a pinch too, despite his harsh piloting.

'I don't see how they can refuse,' he pointed out reasonably. 'Speck is preying on pirates for his own enterprise. About time we turned the tables, wouldn't you say?'

'It is not for me to say,' Fran pointed out dampeningly. She flicked her gaze to him as she shunted power from the unnecessary shield to the engines, 'you have petitioned for Speck's life twice before and been denied. I wonder at your motives now – and fear the muster may as well.'

Balthier curled his lip swinging the Strahl in a knife cut arc through the sky and sweeping up over the Phon Coast towards the port. 'They can doubt my motives all they want, I couldn't care less, so long as they get off their arses and stop the bastard once and for all.'

'Your hatred of this man burns bright in you, as it always has,' Fran counselled, 'Do you not wish your own vengeance? Seek you not to be the one to slay him, as he once slew your mentor?'

Balthier's hands tightened involuntarily on the steering levers of the Strahl, 'Fran please.' He forced his shoulders to remain relaxed. 'Let's not rake over the coals of ancient history, hmm?'

Ancient history amounted to no more than seven years, but to Balthier, a man not over fond of the past in any respect, last week was barely worth the effort of recollection, and the years piled up behind him in disregarded abandon. He prided himself on being a man to live for the moment and wait out tomorrow with an open mind.

'You seek vengeance?' Fran persisted mercilessly. Balthier sighed. It was bloody hard for a man to lie to himself with a partner like Fran there to rip down his pretty conceits around his ears.

'Yes,' he conceded through his teeth, beginning to slack off the throttle as the lights of the port flickered in the gathering darkness ahead. 'But I'm a pragmatic man, Fran. So long as the scum is dead I am not so prideful as to feel the need to do the deed myself.'

'But you would like it not, yes? To be avenged on the man who killed Tournai?'

Balthier's mouth twisted in a pained grimace. To this day he didn't like to hear his old pirate mentor's name spoken, for guilt was a bitter pill to swallow and Balthier had never enjoyed taking his medicine, even when deserved.

'Dying in pursuit of vengeance serves no purpose,' he said simply, for it was true, and Balthier would sooner live guilty than die for vengeance his former master would not have wanted to begin with, 'but yes, I would like to see the man dead all the same.'

'Vengeance is a dangerous and thorny path,' Fran intoned solemnly and Balthier found himself growing abruptly impatient.

'Well then, it is as well I have an airship and can avoid walking it altogether, hmm?' He smirked humourlessly. Fran did not look remotely amused but she said no more about it.

Landing in port was an uneventful affair and Balthier was up and out of the ship and striding through the aerodrome lobby while the children were still gawping at all the gathered airships taking up every available private docking bay.

'Whoa, I've never seen the aerodrome so busy,' Vaan jabbered on to Penelo as they dawdled behind, 'You think something is going on?'

Balthier resisted turning around to say something sharp in retort about Vaan's capacity to completely miss the bloody obvious, but restrained himself. Fran, walking at his side, regarded him coolly.

'You bite your own tongue?' she asked him and he thought he saw a glimmer of wry humour in her regard.

'So you don't have to,' he rejoined easily, but his attention was all for the next few moments and what they might entail.

He had recognised quite a few of the airships docked in port and it would seem that a muster had indeed already been called. He moved swiftly towards Saccio Lane and Reddas' old manse.

At the doors to the extravagantly lit stucco pile perched on the edge of the cliff face, Balthier stopped and wheeled about abruptly to face the two Rabanastrans. 'You two: go and make yourself scarce. We grown-ups have matters to discuss.' He pointed back towards the port imperiously.

'Hey but…' Vaan looked ready to take affront but Penelo, the more perceptive of the pair took one look at the scowl on Balthier's face and caught her beloved's arm. 'Why can't we go in with you? I want to know what's…..'

'Should we rent a room for you and Fran at the Inn for later?' Penelo swiftly interrupted Vaan's complaints, already dragging on Vaan's arm to pull him away. Balthier gave one sharp nod of his chin in affirmation and turned his back on the pair of them.

'Wait – what are we supposed to do, anyhow?' Vaan whined behind his back.

Drown? Balthier thought darkly but did not say it; fall into a deep, bottomless pit ne'er to trouble me again?

With a sharp head shake he dismissed the children from his mind altogether and bounded up the brief flight of stairs leading up to the manse doors. He shoved them open without fanfare (for they were never locked).

He strode confidently into the dilapidated mansion house and headed for the doors to the main parlour without delay while Fran was still placating the children on the front stoop.

He could hear the murmur of voices coming from the other side of the wooden double doors being guarded by a bedraggled pair of Seeqs. The two men went for their weapons as Balthier prowled forward but one withering look from him had the two guards hastily stepping away from the doors so that he might enter.

'Good choice,' he mocked softly as he pulled open the parlour doors. A thick wall of pungent smoke and more ephemeral aromas hit him in the face like a redolent slap as he breached the threshold of the packed room. The assault to the senses was concocted from a mixture of sweat and sea-salt, gun powder, and dirty travelling leathers, and tainted with the slightly more exotic strains of various spirits, beers, and smoking weed. In short, it was the quintessential scent of pirate.

'B'tier,' one old and wizened Bangaa, whose once vibrant blue hued snake skin had now faded to a indeterminate grey with age, greeted him from his post standing by the door. Balthier nodded at him succinctly, 'Cunanan.'

A woman with a bright red tattoo in the shape of a downward sweeping blade festooning her left eye and cheek caught his eye. Lazily she raised one hand in a indolent salute. Balthier spared a smile for the piratess, 'M'lady Nem.'

After that it became a who's who of pirate kind as Balthier picked his way through the gathering (Fran wordlessly materialising at his back) to find a place to lounge in comfort in the packed room.

At the very front of the room, before the big bay windows shuttered against prying eyes and curtains drawn, Rikken stood with Elza, and their diminutive Bangaa compeer Raz. The trio watched silently as Balthier and Fran found a place in the gathering. Rikken peered at them with his one remaining eye.

'Not got that boy wit' yer?' he asked mildly, undoubtedly just to irritate Balthier.

'No,' he said shortly, 'It's past his bedtime.'

This raised a few snickers around the room and a small Moogle tugged on Balthier's trouser leg and offered him a toke from his hookai; Balthier waved him off with a tight smile. The intoxicated Moogle then promptly sat back on a lilac stuffed velvet cushion and took an impossibly huge drag from his long pipe before promptly fainting clear away. Balthier rather hoped the poor little thing hadn't, in fact, died.

He turned back to Rikken and fished the coin and tag he had taken from Tyree's corpse out of his pouch, still wrapped in tattered upholstery cloth. 'Here,' he tossed it towards the depth-perception challenged pirate master, 'The Emerald Duchess won't be making any more port calls.'

The coin fell onto the ruddy surface of the big desk that had once been Reddas', as Rikken didn't even attempt to make a catch for it. The coin rolled free of its wrappings and there was absolute silence while everyone present watched it roll on its edge before landing face up on the table top.

Rikken watched Balthier, 'He dead then?'

Balthier nodded, 'Him and his wife both, and their child is missing,' he paused a moment and deliberately did not look to Elza standing at Rikken's side, 'likely taken as collateral by the Company.'

There were murmurs of outrage from around the room. Tyree had been a small fish in a large pond but he had been a good man and none gathered liked to think of even the lowliest among them meeting such an end.

'Biggs and Wedge bought it too,' a sky pirate counterfeiter called Eamon shouted out from the back of the room, 'Bastards looted the Victus right down to her nuts and bolts and left the pair o' them wit' bullets for eyes; stuffed a five bob coin int' Wedge's gob and a ten bit under Bigg's tongue.'

Balthier tried to remember if he'd ever met this Biggs and Wedge and found himself drawing a blank. Fran leaned in to murmur in his ear. 'One was tall, the other stout; they owed you fifty Gil for a wager lost.'

'Ah, yes,' Balthier remembered the comical pair then. They had been a rather useless duo and their counterfeit licence certificates had been shoddy merchandise indeed. It was not overly surprisingly they had warranted so small a sum of Gil.

'Babs and Enid are missing,' someone called out and Balthier didn't know this voice, 'The Valiant was found drifting towards Jagd with nary a soul onboard – got carted off by the Rozzarians for scrap.'

'Aye,' the old sea-dog Banagan spoke up in his drink roughened brogue, 'Same fate befell the Mary-Roe, and the Daedalus Levine.'

The old sea pirate looked around the gathering from under the brim of his immense hat, the drooping feathers of which waved in the air like a mournful pennant, 'It be a sorry day this, that good ships go abandoned in air and sea, their crew gone we know not where.'

'The Company's men are abroad from here to Veridree,' someone else opined bitterly, 'Them as bold as daylight, they is. It be a disgrace.'

The woman, another stranger to Balthier, spat on the faded Nabradian weave rug for emphasis. Her sentiment was greeted with much consensual spitting and cussing from the assorted pirates. Balthier thought he caught Fran's nose wrinkle in disgust and he almost smiled.

Elza had stepped forward during this open forum discussion to look upon the Gil coin Balthier had thrown down on the table. 'Thirty Gil,' She murmured before looking up and meeting Balthier's eyes with her own tawny gold. 'Them that refuse to join up wit' the Company get a bullet to chew on an' a Gil coin fer it. S'posin' the missin' crew are the ones that agreed to the offer?' she suggested.

'Ack, woman, yer daft; ain't no way our Togan would take up wit' the likes of Speck and his rabble.' A Madhu runner called Lamasch, who had connections to the Landis freedom movement, shouted down the suggestion.

'Hardly a rabble,' Balthier retorted coolly, fixing gaze upon Elza. 'Speck is a businessman first and foremost, and indiscipline is bad for business.'

'Aye,' Rikken nodded, 'and if it be a choice o' joinin' the Company or havin' yer brains blown out the back o' yer ruddy 'ead, what would yer choose, eh?' He turned his half blind gaze around the room, 'Yer act like right bloody brave gits now, the lot o' yer, but half o' yer would cut yer granny's throat if'n yer own neck was fer it.'

Balthier had folded his arms across his chest and was looking down beyond his feet to his own thoughts. 'I don't think they refused an invitation to join the Company.' He spoke his thoughts aloud and lifted his head. He assumed a rapt audience and that was what awaited him.

'Tyree was barely worth the notice of local constabulary forces,' Balthier pointed out dryly, 'Most of those dead were small time smugglers or thieves; the Company has no need for such.'

'Then why kill 'em?' Rikken turned his attention back to Balthier and the room waited for his insight; he was not known far and wide as "the clever bastard" for nothing, after all.

'I don't know,' Balthier flicked his wrist checking his cuff, 'But I would bet a small fortune that there _is_ a reason, and that reason is at the heart of Speck's ambition.'

Elza looked at him through a tangle of her wild, bronze mane of hair falling in front of her predatory eyes. 'You know him best don't yer, Balthier? Yer really sayin' yer don't know what Speck's about?'

Balthier felt his lip curl up and turned his face away from her. 'If I knew that, I'd have put a stop to it already.' He snapped turning back to meet her gaze fixedly when he realised the advantage he let slip by giving up eye contact.

'And I am not the only one in this room who has first hand knowledge of the bastard Speck.' He added sharply before pausing and attempting to swallow back his anger, 'Isn't that right El-Zammira _Tournai_?'

'Balthier,' Fran's soft murmur was warning enough and reluctantly Balthier broke eye contact with Elza and the tension simmering like undercurrents of storm clouds in the air subsided slightly.

'Ah-hmm,' Elza murmured in a dark purr once her own hackles had lowered, 'yer life pay the forfeit for yer meddling in Speck's affairs.' She smiled coldly, 'Judgement of the las' muster still stands, Balthier. Yer kill Speck an' yer die too.'

Rikken raised a hand before Balthier could say anything in response to that and there was a general shifting of intense attention as various members of the gathering who had been present for the muster judgement made seven years ago, and recalled Balthier's first failed petition for Speck's life, looked to him with narrowed regard.

'Mayhap that old rulin' should be overturned?' Rikken suggested thoughtfully but swiftly amended his meaning when he caught the murderous look Elza's sent his way, 'The Company needs stoppin',' he addressed the gathering, 'all us that call em'sel' pirates and free-men have a stake in seein' that happen, but Speck is not a man to trifle with lightly.'

Balthier met Rikken's eyes, 'Tyree's daughter was likely taken by the Company; she's a child. I'm going after her.'

Against his will Balthier's eyes tracked back to Elza who was watching him with fierce attention. He found he couldn't hold her golden eyes after all and let his gaze drift away again. Rikken was watching Balthier and Elza both when he looked up once more.

'A'ight,' the other man said quietly, 'T'aint right fer a gel like that t'be caught up in this sore business.' He looked around the room, 'Is it the judgement of this muster to allow the pirate Balthier to find the gel?'

There was a general rumbling of assent from all corners of the room. Rikken nodded while Elza glared down at the table top and the thirty Gil coin sitting in the very centre like a dirty secret laid bare.

'Right, then,' Rikken nodded to Raz who dragged out a long tattered piece of parchment and feather quill pen, 'Let it be recorded that on this day, the muster o' pirates and freemen o' Balfonheim, gave liberty to Balthier an' Fran, an' any other crew o' the Strahl, to find out what happened to Tyree's daughter an' deliver her safe to the port should they find her livin'.'

He looked hard at Balthier then with his one eye, 'That's it mind; yer find the gel, if'n she's alive, but yer don't take on Speck or his Company less'n yer life or the gel's is at stake, got that?'

Balthier nodded in perfunctory agreement of the terms laid by the muster, 'Understood.'

He pushed off the wall where he had been leaning and looked to Fran, 'Let's be off.' His partner nodded once but he could tell that she had questions he would soon be made to answer.

Thus Balthier left the room and the pirate muster without further ado, but as he went he could still feel Elza's Couerl eyes on his back, fuelled by hatred. She could not understand why he was so determined to see Speck pay, but then, Balthier could hardly blame her.

It was his fault that bloody _Mister Speck_ had killed her father seven years ago, after all.

* * *

**709 O.V. High Summer's Day – Rabanastre**

_To my lord uncle, Marquis Ondore,_

_Uncle Halim, it has recently come to my attention that you may be privy to information regarding the whereabouts of the pirate Balthier and his partner Fran, both of whom you will be aware are of interest to me. I am also given to understand that you contrived with my own counsellors to withhold information on the recent pirate troubles in Archadia and Rozzaria from myself. I would very much like to know on what authority you thought to act in such a way, and why?_

Ashe's quill flew over the page as she sat with legs curled up underneath her on an array of tasselled gold cushions beside Balthier's sick bed in the solarium of the little palace.

Ashe had dismissed Palia to get some rest a few hours earlier and had instructed her palace staff not to disturb her save for matters of cataclysmic disaster. Thus she hoped for a few hours respite alone with her thoughts, her questions, and the sick pirate asleep in a litter of fresh linens beside her.

_More pressingly, however, I would know if it is true that the Strahl was found, some time a litle over a month ago, drifting through Bhujerban air space, seemingly abandoned and showing the signs of forced entry? I hope that I do not need to explain why this information would be pertinent to me, or why I take it ill that such was concealed from my knowledge for so long? The Strahl is the vessel aboard which peace was declared between Dalmasca and the Empire; she is a vessel of national importance to Dalmasca. _

Ashe paused in her rapid scribbling to look down on Balthier. The pirate had remained deeply asleep since Palia had managed to remove the Gil coin from his body. His fever was still raging and he had developed a slightly alarming rattle to his breathing, but Palia was confident that he would be fit to be moved within the week.

_If it is true that you are currently holding the Strahl in the Bhujerban aerodrome then I would like for you to release the vessel to Dalmascan care immediately upon receipt of this missive. I shall a Dalmascan pilot with this letter for that purpose. As you know Vaan and Penelo acted as custodians for the Strahl once before in Balthier and Fran's absence. I believe, should the pirates come looking for their ship, it is to Rabanastre they would therefore look first. _

Ashe paused again and reviewed that last paragraph. She winced; her uncle was a very shrewd man and would easily dismiss such a lightweight excuse. Still Ashe wanted the Strahl in Rabanastre and she knew that it would hasten Balthier's recovery no end to know his ship was safe and near. It would also, a slightly more ruthless voice in Ashe's mind added cynically, afford Ashe valuable leverage against Balthier should she need it.

He had blackmailed her, so she would hold his ship hostage against his good behaviour and future candour in explaining just what was going on. Ashe considered this a fair exchange.

She was just about to set quill to paper again when Balthier made some incoherent utterance and rolled over abruptly onto his side, turning to face her, and dropping one arm across her lap in slumberous presumption.

Ashe set aside her letter for a moment and fastidiously lifted his arm off her and set it down along his side. Balthier muttered ill-spiritedly, scowled in sleep, and dropped his arm back over her lap again. Ashe looked down at the offending arm in annoyance and then to Balthier's face narrowly, looking for any sign of a tell-tale smirk to suggest he was doing this on purpose to irritate her. After a moment she rolled her eyes and left the arm where it was returning to her correspondence; she would not play these silly games.

_I shall not believe that either Balthier or Fran are dead until proof incontrovertible of the fact is revealed to me personally. They survived Bahamut's fall and returned to reclaim the Strahl, after all. I am given to understand, uncle, that you too doubt the accepted view that the pirates are dead, as you have released a reward for information on their whereabouts. I would like to know why this is of interest to you as well. _

Ashe hesitated but decided against writing anything further as it was likely ill-advised. She might end up writing something that would lead her uncle to suspect Balthier or Fran had made contact with her, and while Ashe did not believe that her uncle posed a threat to Balthier, she would honour his request to let no one know that she had seen him - or that she had agreed to aid him. Finally with nothing left to write Ashe signed the letter H.R.H Ashelia of Dalmasca and folded the crisp paper neatly down the middle ready for a wax seal she would affix later.

It was at this moment that Balthier saw fit to rouse. He blinked open tired hazel brown eyes and lifted his head a half-inch off the pillow before giving up on the effort. He watched her for a second or two as she put aside the letter and the quill.

'Letter writing, highness?' he croaked blandly not attempting to remove his arm from her person and seeming quite happy to keep draped possessively across her lap.

'Yes,' Ashe sounded unintentionally sharp, partly because she did not want Balthier seeing sight of the correspondence to her uncle and partly because she was, now that Balthier was conscious once more, morbidly aware of the potential impropriety of their position. Here she was, Dalmasca's unmarried Queen, sitting pretty as a picture next to the bed of a naked sky pirate who was widely presumed to be dead. Revolutions had been declared for less in times gone by.

'Hmm,' Balthier finally removed his arm, rolling onto his back so that he could push down the sheets and examine the bandaging wrapped around his side.

'Balthier!' Ashe snapped at him as he had pushed the blankets rather low indeed and Ashe had just seen more of the pirate than she ought to. She reached down and yanked the sheets back up to his mid chest.

The pirate blinked at her dully, 'Blushing Highness?' His familiar honeyed drawl was rough and raw, but he still made Ashe feel like a silly maid with but a few syllables of speech, 'I dare say there is nothing under this sheet you have not seen before, hmm?'

The desire to hit Balthier was almost tangible but she refrained because he was an invalid and she was a grown woman above this sort of thing. 'I may have seen naked men before, Balthier, but that does not mean I have any desire to see _you_ without your clothes.'

'Don't look then,' he replied flippantly and before she could stop him he pushed the sheets down to bunch low over his abdomen so he could poke at his own side curiously.

'What happened to the other one?' he asker her distractedly as Ashe focused her attention directly ahead of her, refusing to look at Balthier at all. Really, did the man have no shame whatsoever?

'What "other one"?' Ashe demanded archly wondering how long Balthier was going to poke and prod at himself and thus force her not to look. She felt it, like prickly heat against her skin, when Balthier shifted his gaze to her once more. Pulsing heat flared in her cheeks and down her throat and her heart thumped erratically. In all this time apart from Balthier she had forgotten how shockingly improper he could be. For some reason she was always according him more propriety of character in memory than his actions actually supported.

Balthier gave a snort of derision at her tone and the flush across her cheeks, and elaborated in drawling fashion, 'That Bhujerban maid you had tending me; her name escapes me for the moment.'

There was a pause in which Ashe heard the smirk in Balthier's words loud and clear and hated him for it. '_She_ did not seem mortally offended at the mere sight of a bit of pirate flesh.'

Ashe didn't know why the slight hint of insinuation in Balthier's tone should affect her so, but despite herself she whipped her head back to glare at him. 'Her name is Palia, and I would kindly ask you not to refer to her as "that Bhujerban maid".'

'Palia,' he rolled the word on his tongue and Ashe felt a peculiar spark of envy jolt within her. The pirate rarely ever deigned to use her given name, after all, and he certainly didn't accord it the care he used with Palia's. 'Hmm,' he murmured drowsily, 'a nice name.'

Ashe blinked, and mine is not? She found herself wondering and had to bite her tongue to stop herself asking such a ridiculous question out loud. She thought she might be reacting to the stress of Balthier's sudden return to her life, and her sleeplessness of the night before. There was no other reason for her to be behaving in such a silly fashion.

Balthier seemed to be preparing to doze off again and although his cheeks were flushed with fever and his throat was sore, he seemed better now than he had since appearing in her bathroom the night before.

'Palia is my chief lady-in-waiting, Balthier,' Ashe was not sure why she scolded him except that she did not much like the odd mood that seemed to have taken hold of him even in the brief few moments he had been awake.

'I expect you to treat her with the respect you would accord me.' She paused a moment and saw a spark of mischief light in his eyes. She scowled it down. 'In _fact_,' she amended severely, 'I would demand you afford her a great deal more respect and courtesy than that, as you have her to thank for your care and treatment.'

Balthier arched both brows, 'Is that so?' he mused sounding almost whimsical. 'Hmm, and I had thought it was your majesty I should thank. Well,' he smirked slyly, 'now I know better I shall not waste breath on unnecessary and undeserved thanks for you, Highness.'

Ashe went rigid with irritation, 'Bastard pirate,' she hissed between her teeth and turned her face away as he chuckled.

'Now, now, majesty; that is hardly language befitting one of your rank,' His hand lightly stroked up her bare arm and Ashe jerked in surprise and turned back to face him. Balthier's expression was somewhat more solemn and proper now.

'For what it is worth,' he began in tones that suggested he did not think what he was about to say was worth all that much, 'I _do_ thank you for offering comfort earlier.'

Ashe was confused, 'Earlier?'

He looked at her seriously and flapped a hand negligently down his own body, 'Not the first time I have had to endure having someone dig about pulling shrapnel from my innards,' he told her in off-hand tones, 'but it is not an experience I enjoy. I am grateful that it was you, Ashe, and not a stranger who held me down.'

'You knew?' Ashe blinked down at him in total surprise. 'I had not thought you fully aware.' She admitted. Ashe's pulse thumped heavily in the cavity of her chest. Gods, but she would sooner he had been completely insensate to the whole affair.

Balthier raised one hand languidly to rub at his closed eyes, 'I wish that I had not been,' he said sounding sincere enough in that regard. 'Alas; years of engendering a healthy paranoia as a pirate has left me with an inability to settle in the company of strangers.'

Ashe said nothing in response to that, but it occurred to her that, his usual arrogance and underhandedness in the manner of acquiring her aid not withstanding, it had no doubt cost Balthier something to seek aid from anyone, let alone Ashe herself. Ashe had always suspected strongly that Balthier was a man who preferred to collect favours rather than spend them and would rely on no one save himself or Fran if he could avoid it.

She let out a deep breath and despite the protest of the colder, harder, side of her nature Ashe relinquished perhaps her only gambit against the pirate without a fight.

'Balthier – I know where the Strahl is.'

His eyes, which had slipped closed, snapped open and his gaze locked unerringly to hers; his fingers curled around her wrist almost unconsciously and she felt the tremor running through his grip.

'Where?' his voice was hoarse and shook with the intensity of the feeling behind that simple question.

'Bhujerba,' Ashe watched Balthier closely for any and all reaction to her words, 'She was found drifting a few miles from Dorstonis; there was no one aboard and the ship had been ransacked.'

Balthier closed his eyes and turned his face away. She saw what looked like a flash of dismay and confusion ripple across his countenance as he let his hand slip from her wrist. He nodded grimly after a moment.

'Just like all the others,' he whispered before marshalling his reserves and facing Ashe once more, 'The marquis has her?'

Ashe nodded and then added before he should ask, 'I have told no one that you are in my care, but I have sent word to my uncle to send the Strahl on to Rabanastre.' She rolled her shoulder in a shrug and tried not to ponder over the widening of his eyes and the minute signs of genuine surprise that quirked his brows. Did he honestly think that she would not summon his ship for him?

'I suggested that your ship should go into Vaan and Penelo's custodianship as it did after Bahamut.' Ashe nipped her bottom lip, 'There is no reason for my uncle to suspect you are here. I have kept your confidence and told no one save Palia.'

For the longest moment Balthier just looked at her, and Ashe could not read his eyes at all, nor guess at what he thought. She fast became quite uncomfortable under his scrutiny, which surprised her and thus forced her to hold his gaze until he broke the dead lock between them and looked away.

Balthier turned his head away and once again closed his eyes, and for a moment he actually looked as young as he was; a man of just twenty-five. He released a careful breath and nodded with his eyes still closed.

'Well then I suppose I owe you more thanks, Highness.' He said quietly, as serious now as he had been that day on the Phon Coast when he had admitted his lineage to her. 'If the Strahl is safe then there's hope for Fran also, as I last saw them both being driven from the sky in flames.'


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Five: 708 O.V: Somewhere of Great Cruelty **

The rough wood of the board he is bound to scraps against his bare back and splinters slide between layers of skin, working deep into oozing cuts. The Worgen hair rope twisted around each wrist and lashing him to this indignity grinds into his flesh, flaying away skin in washes of salty blood.

Speck steps up beside his head, holding the customised fire blackened poker in one hand, affixing the golden Gil coin to the pincers on the end. Speck was as offensively nondescript in appearance as even, even here deep in the bowels of his own torture chambers he had the appearance of affable harmlessness.

Gods Balthier hated him.

'I suppose asking you to be reasonable is a waste of breath?' Speck queried as he regarded him with utterly uninteresting medium brown eyes, the pure blandness of his gaze intensified by the spectacles perched on his small nose.

He skinned his lips back from his teeth like a caged wolf. The man who was Balthier was gone and all that was left was the wild animal snarling for freedom, 'Reason is for the meek…..and the….' He pants through pain to force the words out, 'and the uninspired.'

Speck cocks his head to the side rather like a bird and frowns as he chases down the quote's lineage. The bastard actually smiles and laughs when he catches it. 'Philomentes, that old reprobate,' He shakes his head smilingly, 'And of course the old coot is right. Reason is just a shackle; much as morality and justice are fabrications of an oppressive state.' The man chuckles warmly, the sound so openly friendly it makes Balthier sick, 'Trust you to be an adherent of Philomentes, Balthier; a man after your own heart, eh?'

Speck stretches out one black glove clad hand to poke a finger at the blood saturated ropes around his wrists. Balthier grits his teeth and Speck curls his surprisingly ugly large hands around Balthier's ragged wrist and squeezes. The sick light in the man's empty eyes clearly expresses the pleasure he receives in causing others pain.

'If it would please you more Balthier, this needn't be a matter of surrender – I won't force subservience on you as I do the rest of the chattel.' Speck looks at him and his eyes emote just the right about of bereavement for the needless brutality he has inflicted, 'Please let's be adults about this; join me Balthier, as an equal not a slave.'

Once more he bares his teeth, 'I told you once Speck…….you can't afford me.'

He knows what is to come, of course he knows, but knowing does nothing to prepare one for the pain. Faster than a striking serpent Speck shoves the poker's other end into the fire, the end that has a vicious driving point and does not clasp a Gil coin in metal pincers. When the end burns like embers of hell he reverses his grip on the poker as one might reverse a grip on a two headed pike. Icy cold fear sweat breaks out over Balthier's brow. The pokers end is bright as the red eyes of a hellhound.

'So be it,' Speck told him calmly. 'What I cannot buy I shall simply take.'

Balthier does not close his eyes or turn his face away, though he almost wishes he could. The blazing heat of the poker's tapered end is agony against the resistance of his flesh - he feels the burn – but not for long, as flesh gives way rather swiftly to the point of Speck's acquisitive aggression and soon it is a different pain, one of invasion, that takes Balthier.

'Really this is all so unnecessary, Balthier.'

He does not scream as Speck drives the red hot poker deep into his side, but instead strange and raw guttural noises, like the sounds of dying fiends, bubble up from his lips. Balthier's eyes leap to the dark and heavy rock ceiling of this subterranean hell hole. He watches trails of sand sift from minute cracks in the cave ceiling and gather in pools in the crags of the quartz lined walls. He thinks of the sandstorm raging outside and the Alraunes roaming the Yensa and tries to force his consciousness from his agonised body.

'A man can possess too much pride, Balthier. Give up already, while you can still make a good bargain.'

Speck wrenches the spike out of his flesh and Balthier only narrowly manages to strangle his own howl of agony before it can fly free of his throat; his mind is wild with the pain and he wonders how much more of this he can conceivably live through? A better question might be how much more of this does he want to live through - for surely death is preferable?

'By the gods man, but you've got some guts,' Speck laughs brightly, amused by his own double-meaning jest. Balthier looks at him through the torrent of stinging sweat that cascades down his face. He refuses to look down at his mutilated body. The man's be-spectacled eyes are bright with something that, had he not been standing there with the bloody poker in his hand, might almost have been respect.

'Reconsider,' Speck presses, 'I knew, even when you were just a stripling of eighteen, that you were a man to make the world your own, Balthier.' Speck shakes his head and his lying eyes are filled with an almost pride. If Balthier could have managed it, he would have spat in the man's eye then. 'And now you have done it – Vayne slayer, father killer, saviour of Dalmasca. You died on Bahamut and rose again.'

Speck's hand glides up the length of the poker and his fingers squeeze down around the gore covered pointed end; smoke rises from the still heated end. Speck lifts his viscera slathered palm up to his face and examines the tincture of Balthier's blood soaking into the leather of his glove in something like rapturous awe.

'Join me.' Speck insists as he twists the poker around gripping it in both hands and thrusts the coin end into the forge to heat and burn.

Balthier breathes uneasily, panting and choking, as his heart struggles to find a safe pace and beat and his synapses scream with pain. His blood pours like water down his side, over his hip, down his leg. There is a very large part of him that wants to give in now. He can always recant later, after all. Just agree and then this pain can end, damn you; a voice in his head berates him.

Balthier knows that it is a lie; take up one of Speck's coins and you are his forever.

Speck watches Balthier, as he pulls the white hot poker from the forge. He handles the poker in such a way that Balthier can see the blazing heat of the coin; the demarcation of Dalmasca's queen in profile clearly visible. Balthier turns his head away, closing his eyes. Speck has used a Dalmascan coin in deliberate mockery, for the man's sadism knows no bounds. There is a voice inside his head clamouring for relief, surcease, surrender; anything at all that will stop the pain that he knows is to come.

'Be reasonable man,' Speck cajoles him, 'You know I've won; I'll have you the hard way or I can end this now. We can be equals in this grand endeavour. Join me and we shall shape the Company into the greatest force of change Ivalice has ever seen!'

'No,' one word and it might as well be his last; in fact he bloody hopes it will be. He is a fool, a damned stupid, prideful fool. He knows that Speck can devise a thousand ways to hurt him even in the dying embers of the day, and then come up with a million more tomorrow. He knows he should feign surrender so that he can survive to fight another day.

He knows this, Balthier has always been the pragmatist, the realist, the cynic, but he can't do it. He can't give in to Speck.

There are some things that cannot, _must not_, be borne. He will not swell the ranks of the Black Guard for any means. He knows if he surrenders now he might not find the strength to rebel later. Therefore he cannot surrender.

'No,' he says again and he means it.

'A pity,' Speck says and it sounds like he actually means it, 'I really don't want to do this Balthier; but if this is your price, so be it.'

Speck calls two of his silent black garbed henchmen over to wield metal hooks to pull back the ragged edges of Balthier's poker wound and Balthier writhes against the rough wood of the board, his heels drumming against it due to the excruciating pain. His fingers flex and curl helplessly, grasping for air as if to wield it as a weapon. He sees the emptiness in Speck's eyes as the other man forces the heated Gil coin deep into the contours of Balthier's flesh.

Balthier screams and he screams and he screams. Somehow, and this is the worst cruelty in a nest of depravity, he still hears Speck's voice over the wrenching howls of his own pain.

'Bought and sold Balthier; all men have their price and now all Ivalice shall know yours.'

* * *

**709 O.V: The Little Palace Solarium Rabanastre - Maid's Day**

Ashe had been working through a budget of papers while nested upon cushions on the floor when Balthier reared back into consciousness with a strangled cry and so much violence of motion that he knocked Palia, who had crouched beside him to check the dressing on his wound, straight back onto her rear end.

Ashe knew immediately from the wild look in his uncharacteristically wide eyes that Balthier was not fully conscious and instead still caught in whatever nightmare had wrung such naked panic from him. Rising swiftly Ashe waved Palia back as Balthier seemed to almost gasp air into his lungs before dropping his head in his hands.

It had been two days since she had sat beside him and told the pirate that his Strahl was safe. Two days since Balthier had suggested that Fran had been with the Strahl the last time he had seen either and then almost instantly, he had questioned his own assertion.

Since then Balthier had slept most of the time; or so Palia had told Ashe. When he woke he had been agitated, tetchy, confused and nervous; all traits that Ashe did not naturally associate with the pirate.

'Balthier?' she queried in clear but calm voice. Ashe had woken roughly from enough nightmares of her own that she knew not to crowd him or make any sudden moves. Sensing the precariousness of the situation Palia eased back from her patient and allowed Ashe to take control.

Balthier did not respond to her voice and continued to sit up in his welter of sheets cupping his face in his hands and breathing rapidly and unsteadily. Ashe could see the fast flutter of heart and lungs moving under the visible architecture of his ribs. It occurred to Ashe that she must see to it that he ate more than the sops of bread and milk Palia had managed to force him to ingest, for he was growing painfully thin.

'Balthier you are safe, you are here in Dalmasca. You remember don't you?'

Still he did not respond but the calming of his breathing suggested that he was unlikely to lash out at her approach and so Ashe walked over to him, making sure her tread made sound on the cushion strewn floor of the solarium so he would not be surprised by her presence beside him. She crouched gingerly next to him on his right side and tentatively reached out to place her palm upon his bare shoulder.

'Balthier, can you hear me?'

He jerked like a wild animal and his head came up and whipped around, lips curling in ready snarl, which immediately fell away when he came back to himself to recognise her and his surroundings.

'Ashe, bloody hell; don't creep up on a man like that.'

Vehemence fading he groaned and relaxed marginally but his head still drooped and his eyes still refused to look at anything except his own hands sitting limply in his lap. Ashe had never seen the pirate so visibly shaken; one might even deduce from all this that Balthier was just a man, after all. Ashe almost smiled, somewhat caustically. The man must be in quite a state to allow so much genuine emotion to escape him.

'I didn't creep up on you,' she told him dryly, 'You just weren't paying attention, pirate.'

Her palm warm against his fevered, flesh Ashe could feel the tremor of his breathing shiver through his body; he was trembling. Thoughtlessly she trailed her hand down the elegant line of his spine; partly to offer comfort and partly because she liked the long spare grace of his arched back.

Balthier's head came back up again and he turned to stare at her. 'Don't do that,' He said very quietly and very distinctly.

Ashe, startled, withdrew her hand as if he had stung her. She felt a flare of embarrassment touch her cheeks.

'I apologise,' she said stiffly.

Balthier almost smirked as if sensing her stung pride, 'Fran,' he seemed to falter on his partner's name a moment, as if surprising himself in speaking of her at all. 'Fran does that,' He said very softly and Ashe understood. She struggled to think of something to say and found she could think of nothing of any comfort. Strangely Balthier chooses to speak more anyway.

'She is forever scolding me for slouching.' Balthier's eyes contain a glimmer of his familiar mirth in them, perhaps kindled by thoughts of his dearest partner. 'It is her belief that I shall shrink in on myself and compact my own spine with all my slouching.'

Ashe allowed herself a small smile, recognising the explanation was also meant as tacit apology for his previous sharpness. 'I cannot believe the leading man ever slouches.' She rejoined teasingly.

Balthier's lips twitch and it pleases Ashe to see the spark of humour deepen in his eyes, 'Why do you think I wear the vest, Highness?' He retorts easily and Ashe can see him deliberately pulling himself out of his night terrors and fever dreams with each word of banter, 'It is physically impossible to slouch – or sit comfortably at all – in _that _piece of apparel.'

Ashe does laugh then and Balthier's brown eyes sparkle with that odd gleam of relish that once, before she came to know him better, Ashe had taken for mockery, but now knows to be simple pleasure when his jests hit their mark with his audience. Balthier is a man who takes a great deal of delight in his own wit Ashe knows, but only so long as others do as well. He is, paradoxically, a rather generous cynic.

Palia clears her throat pointedly and it is only then that Ashe realises she and Balthier have simply been holding the others gaze for these last handful of seconds. Ashe jerks her head to the side and Balthier (she has no doubt) is smirking when he turns to look at Palia.

'I'm glad you are feeling better bhadra,' Palia tells him smiling slyly and coming to kneel on his other side with a fresh roll of bandages and curative odds and ends.

'Oh I'm sure,' Balthier smiles back at her brightly and it is not just Palia who gapes at him in surprise when his beautifully modulated Archadian tones wrap smoothly around the Bhujerban tongue, 'All the better to poke and prod me, no?'

Palia laughs, 'Ah you have found me out,' she tells him smilingly in her own tongue and Balthier reclined on his elbows to give her access to his wounded side. He winced when he saw the wound unveiled, and his face darkens, even though the last two days have seen a great improvement to the wound site. Ashe, in contrast, cannot take her eyes from his face; she is astounded.

'I did not know you spoke Bhujerban.' She states almost accusingly and immediately regrets her tone.

Balthier chuckles but it ends in a sharp hiss as Palia begins to clean the wound with a potion, and the healing draught stings the flesh. He flicks a laughing glance Ashe's way all the same.

'Majesty there is a wealth of things you do not know about me,' He purrs at her, deliberately provocative, but he does not bother with an accompanying leer or anything else so obviously flirtatious; instead he begins to assist Palia in re-wrapping the bandages around his chest.

'You are of Archadian birth,' Ashe points out feeling oddly aggrieved that her assumptions are at fault, 'And Archadians are notorious for speaking no tongue but their own - and expecting all other nations to do the same.'

Balthier's lips quiver, 'Ah not true; for Bhujerba is a favoured holidaying resort for the Archadian gentry.' His dark eyes flash at her and she knows he is about to deliver another jest. Quite abruptly he raises one hand and snaps his fingers as if trying to attract the attention of someone, then in obnoxiously loud voice he calls out in bad and broken Bhujerban: 'Waiter bring me more Madhu – I'm thirsty!'

Ashe is a bit confused but Palia gives way to peels of laughter, 'Ah it is true; the Archadian youths who flock the Cloudbourne sound exactly so.' She claps her hands in amusement. Balthier ducks his head as if in gracious acceptance of the applause.

Ashe, for no reason whatsoever, is quite abruptly, and inconceivably, jealous. She does not like the instant and easy rapport between Balthier and her lady-in-waiting and she is quite aghast at herself for it.

'And were _you_ one such boorish lout Balthier?' she asked him with more tartness than she intended, 'Is that where you picked up your grasp of the language?'

Balthier is clearly in high spirits now, despite how he came to wake but scant half hour before, and his eyes are dancing with merriment and wicked teasing when he turns back to face her.

'Hmm, while it is undoubtedly true that I have picked up all manner of things, not all of them good, from hanging around taverns, Highness.' He smirks at his own insinuation, 'I have spent more time serving the bar at the Cloudbourne then I have propping it up as a paying customer.'

Ashe blinked, not just at the notion of Balthier earning an honest wage in such a……mundane…..manner but also by the insinuation that he has spent considerable time in Bhujerba in the past. The pirate had always given the impression that he hailed from nowhere and settled on no land for longer than the time it took to restock the Strahl, and although Ashe knows that the former is a lie, she still finds it hard to imagine the pirate spending much time in any hume habitation. He is like a humming bird, buzzing from place to place faster than an eye-blink.

'Ah,' Palia murmurs meditatively, interrupting Ashe's musings, 'Now I see - I thought it was you, but I was not sure.' Palia taps a finger to her cheek in thought, 'You are Ran, are you not? It was you who used to fly for old man Tournai; the boy who built the moving chair for Mama Pern's poor crippled boy?' Palia smiles broadly, 'Yes, I remember you now, bhadra.'

'Ran?' Ashe demanded before Balthier could answer; her eyes widen, 'as in _Ffam_ran?'

Balthier winced delicately, 'Highness please; can we not air my dirty laundry all over the place, hmm?'

Ashe will not be made to feel embarrassed this time, '"Ran"?' she persists, 'And just how many other names do you have, pirate? Do you keep an appellation in every port as other pirate's keep a doxy?'

Balthier actually laughs, as if he thinks she is trying to amuse him. 'Well,' he smiles drowsily, 'perhaps not in every port, just as I do not keep a _woman_ in every port either.'

He smirks and then flips his hand in a magnanimous easy gesture, 'You know how I came to leave my home, Majesty, and for a boy of Empire who wishes to outrun Empire's reach there is but one place he thinks to go.'

Ashe blinked, 'Bhujerba…..you ran away from Archades to Bhujerba?' she stares at him, 'you are telling me that you ran from the Empire to become a Bhujerban _bar-keep_?'

Balthier gave her a droll look, 'Would it suit your sense of the dramatic better, Highness, if I had left my home, as a stripling of sixteen, to become a hardened criminal?'

'You _are_ a hardened criminal.' Ashe pointed out, still struggling to imagine Balthier as 'Ran' the bar-boy. Placing Balthier within the confines of a tavern is easy enough, but the notion of Balthier performing tasks of manual labour, wielding mop and broom, and carrying drinks to and fro……no, it is too much.

Balthier is watching her very levelly, 'As always, Ashe, I am touched to the cockles of my heart to discover what high esteem you hold me in.'

Ashe waves that off indifferently, 'Balthier you don't have a heart,' she looks at him sharply, 'And even less scruple.'

Balthier can't keep the smirk from his face, 'Hmm, well, possibly.' He concedes, 'But one can hardly be blamed for what the wide world makes of a man, can he?'

Ashe scoffs, 'As if you would ever allow chance and circumstance to dictate your life, Balthier. No, what you are now, you are solely because of your own design.'

The smile leaves his face like water slipping through fingers, something dark and jaded fills his eyes for a moment and Ashe is caught quite by surprise. She watches as shadows swallow his vision and his gaze turns introverted. The pirate is suddenly many miles away in spirit.

'Pretty to think so,' He murmured and almost unconsciously, or so it seemed, his fingers brushed over the bandages covering the deep wound in his side. 'No, Highness,' Balthier told her quietly, in that same quiet voice he had used when once, on the Phon Coast, he had beseeched her not to give her heart to a stone, 'you are wrong; for every man has his price, to be asked, to be met, to be bought and sold.' He shook his head bitterly, 'and once the trade is done there is no going back.'

Ashe frowned and without thinking reached out a hand to touch his bare shoulder in a feather light and nervous caress, 'Balthier?'

He looked almost sharp when his gaze focused on her and his voice was crisp, 'Any word on my girl?'

It took Ashe a moment to realise he meant the Strahl and she nodded, 'My uncle is due to release her to one of Dalmasca's royal pilot's tomorrow. She should be docked in the aerodrome in less than twenty-four hours.'

Balthier nodded succinctly and his mood had undergone yet another mercurial change that it seemed to Ashe that the man might have as many personalities as he did names. 'Good - then I'll be able to take my leave of you sooner than you had hoped Highness.'

A fission of total surprise and something approaching dismay washed over Ashe, and remembering that Palia was still in attendance she turned to her maid for help. 'Surely he is not fit to leave?'

Palia was watching Balthier keenly and when she spoke she spoke in Bhujerban, 'My lady is right, bhadra…..act in too much haste and you may not live to repent your folly.'

Balthier's expressive mouth quirked in caustic humour but he shook his head, 'I think….I can almost remember where the bastard held me, damn it.'

He looked up at Ashe and his eyes were chaotic, 'I have the damnedest feeling that bringing the Strahl here might be a mistake.' He swept a hand through his hair, 'Speck knows how much I love my ship; he wouldn't leave her floating unharmed, nor allow Ondore to take her first, not unless it is all a ploy to lure me in.'

'Balthier you are not making sense,' Ashe squeezed his shoulder, 'Slow down, be calm.'

Without warning Balthier's hand lashed out and encircled Ashe's wrist, 'You don't understand. I almost took up a coin once, in Bhujerba, and it cost Tournai his life,' Balthier's face twisted in a mask of self-contempt, 'What if the coin you dug from my innards this time was not my asking price, but instead Fran's? What if I'm not the one he's hunting, but her instead?'

Ashe wrenched her wrist from his hold, 'Balthier stop this! What has come over you to be so wild?'

The pirate shook his head savagely pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes, 'I don't know,' He admitted through gritted teeth. 'I am fine, and then, without warning, memory comes upon me.'

Balthier sighed again and spoke with strained calm. 'I fear the Crucible where all men's souls are weighed and measured, and I do not even know what it is or how I came to escape. I hear voices in my memories tell me I have killed Fran and I think I hear her scream, yet I am sure, so sure, those voices are liars,' he scoffs a derisive laugh, 'but I'll be buggered if I know where my partner truly resides. I have forgotten something immensely important, I am sure of it.'

Balthier took in a deep breath of air and raised his face to Ashe, expression carved grim with tension, 'I think the Black Guard has risen Majesty, and I think I have led them right to your door.'


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Six: 708 O.V: Bethlewaites Ides**

'Dunno what yer on about mate.' The grubby looking man in soiled and sweat stained leathers scratched at his stubble coated face and blinked reddened bleary eyes as he slouched across the tavern table.

Fergus Hemp was one of those men that almost, _almost_, made Balthier wish he still possessed the magistrate authority of a Judge. He was an odious, despicable waste of good air and Balthier felt besmirched just by association. Good gods the man was worse than bloody _Jules_.

Balthier could feel his lip curling in contempt as he stared down at the man, and he pulled the cheap wine bottle out of the man's reach and leaned down over the table.

'I think you do.' He said. 'In fact I think you'd better _hope_ you do know what I'm talking about – for the good of your health.'

There were two types of pirates in this world and the definition had nothing to do with a pirate's chosen method of transportation; sky and sea were merely measures of distance to be surpassed. No, the real division was between those who preyed on others and those who didn't.

Some men and women were branded pirates because they chose to live by their own merits, outside of the constraints of empires and monarchy; these were the nomadic mark hunters, the purveyors of cheap counterfeit goods; all ultimately harmless.

The other sort, those were the predators; the slave traders, the kidnappers and bounty hunters, the bandits and the cutthroats. The men, and women, who stole lives and livelihoods as well as pretty baubles from rich coffers.

Balthier himself danced the dividing line betwixt and between the two. He was not harmless; he'd been thief, bandit, robber and all, in his time – but he had kept his predations confined to those who made their wealth stealing the Gil from the pockets of the poor. He stole from thieves - the sport was better.

Fergus Hemp was a scavenger. Calling him a predator afforded this wretch too much dignity and mystique. He was nothing more than a filthy parasite – and he preyed on only the poorest, the weakest and the most desperate. He _stole _children and sold them on to the slave markets most of the governments of Ivalice pretended did not exist.

His mere existence disgusted Balthier in a way that he did not like to explore to deeply for fear of what it might tell him about himself. Suffice to say, Balthier truly loathed slave traders one and all.

Fergus stared up at him, his washed out greenish eyes dulled with drink and who knows what else. He raised his hands, the dirt embedded under the nails. 'Look, now mate…..no harm, right?' he smiled insipiently and Balthier resisted the desire to punch his teeth out.

Instead he held out the picture of Jassalinda before the man's vacant eyes, 'This girl – has she come through the markets or not?'

Fergus reached out to touch the picture and Balthier jerked it out of the way. He did not want this sickening bundle of bones and sickness laying a finger upon even so much as the image of Tyree's daughter. The glint of avaricious hunger he saw in Fergus' eyes did nothing to improve his mood.

'Pretty,' Fergus murmured and Balthier's free hand clenched into a fist.

'Answer the question - have you seen this girl?'

The interior of the bar was quiet; there weren't many people drinking in the middle of a sweltering hot day slap-dab along the treacherous roads of the Mosphoran Highwaste. This particular watering hole was less a tavern as a lean to shack propped up against the dull yellowish rock face of the Mosphoran cliffs. It did not have a name, but all the rogues of Mosphoran knew how to find it. The handful of Seeq bandits watching this altercation from the other side of the shack knew better than to interfere.

'…….No……don't reckon so,' Fergus slurred with ponderous slowness. Balthier cautioned himself not to grind his teeth as he tucked away the picture frame.

'Is it likely anyone else would have come across her; one of the other slavers?'

Fergus shrugged, 'How'd I know that?' he whined, 'Not like I knows what them is doing, is it?'

'If you don't you're a fool.' Balthier snapped.

Slavers were constantly poaching one another's 'wares'. The market for hume flesh was lucrative and the poor unfortunates who ended up in Fergus' clammy hands often ended up furnishing the brothels and whorehouses of Rozzaria and the Empire. There were at least five slaving crews operating along the Mosphoran and the Phon Coast that Balthier knew of, and likely more besides.

'When's the next market?' he demanded, berating himself for even thinking that this churl would be able to supply any information to him. It had been foolish to hope that Jassalinda had somehow fallen into a slavers hands and not Speck's.

Fergus scratched at his cheek through his stubble and Balthier was disgusted to see flakes of dead skin begin to shower the table top. Fergus had some manner of vile rash engulfing his face on one side. Balthier's lip curled contemptuously. The filthy scum had caught the Floozy Pox; doubtlessly through 'sampling the wares' before shipping them off to Rozzarian flop houses.

'Dunno,' Fergus took time thinking, as it was obviously not a natural talent for him, 'the pickin's have been slim lately, what with peace an' all; not so many people fleein' through the Mosphoran to get away from the wars. We ain't had so many markets 'cuz of that.'

Balthier reminded himself that he did not have a right to end this miserable slime's life; no matter that Ivalice would likely be a better place with one less slaver in it. He wasn't a Judge anymore – he was not an instrument for justice (nor had he ever been).

'Give your best guess,' he suggested with strained civility. There was not a hint of a smirk playing upon his face.

Dealing with a wretch like Fergus churned up a lot of emotions in Balthier that he would sooner not deal with. He reminded himself that he had never wanted to be made Judge and he had hated every second trapped in that corrupt institution, which was true, but it was also false. Life was rarely a matter of black and white; no matter how he might wish it was so.

Fergus continued to scratch at his face, flakes of dead skin drifting down towards the table all the while. Fergus winced suddenly and shifted in his chair, and his free hand shifted downward towards his crotch. Balthier smacked his fist down on the tabletop in open disgust.

'So much as think of scratching _there_ and I'll slice your bollocks off and feed them to you,' he smiled, eyes hard. 'Where and when is the next skin market?' Balthier repeated in a silky purr.

Fergus went pale under his stubble and scabrous rashes, 'Tchita, highlands, week today.' He stuttered, 'All o' them blackies are gonna be there.'

Balthier blinked, still carefully watching Fergus' free hand for the slightest twitch of movement, 'Blackies?'

'Y'know,' Fergus' fingers were twitching with the desire to scratch himself, '_The Company_; them all wear black and that. A lot of them have been buying recently; really helping to keep business goin'.'

Balthier's lips compressed into a thin line, 'The Company is buying slaves? Why? Are they seeking men, women –humes, seeqs, bangaas -_what_?' He smacked his fist onto the tabletop again to make sure he had Fergus's attention.

The man was wriggling with discomfort and his cheek was oozing under his facial hair where Fergus had scratched it raw. The smell of the pox was enough to twist Balthier's stomach. Soon enough it would eat Fergus away entire; couldn't have happened to a more deserving soul.

'Children,' Fergus blurted out, 'The Company's been after children. That's what they've been asking for.'

Balthier's blood ran cold. 'The Company has been ordering the kidnapping of children?' he asked very succinctly. 'You and your ilk have been _stealing_ children for order?'

'That's right,' Fergus said and then winced, 'Look mate, I've really got to,' he gestured to his crotch, 'This rash is bleeding killing me!'

Balthier turned away in utter disgust, but as soon as Fergus had transferred both hands to the job of scratching his own bollocks Balthier whipped around, fist cocked, and punched Fergus clean across the jaw. The man went sprawling across the floor of the shack, taking his chair and the table with him. He did not move, save to breathe. Balthier rubbed absently at his split knuckles. He met the eyes of the Seeq bandits across the bar, who were watching avidly.

'Good day to you gentlemen,' he nodded and turned swiftly on his heel.

Fran was waiting for him, alongside the tagalong brats, at one of the water shrines along the Highwaste. She took one look at his clenched jaw and bruised knuckles and sighed.

'Went well, did it? Your chat,' Her tone was almost as dry as the dust of the road.

Balthier rubbed irritably at the slight cut on his index finger knuckle and fussed with his cuffs scowling all the while, 'Speck's been buying children from the skin markets; like as not he'll be in Tchita next week for more of the same.'

He started walking, headed towards where he had docked the Strahl. Fran came abreast with him while the two children fell in behind like some bizarre rank and file formation.

'Children?' she queried.

'Yes.'

Fran glanced at sharply at him, observing the tension in his body, the lack of verbosity in his replies. Her nostrils flared to catch the hot metallic flame of his anger and her ears twitched.

'Why?' she asked. Balthier in a temper was a fearsome thing but she had found that the best way to diffuse it was to force him to talk.

Balthier released an expulsive breath of air, stopped walking and stretched his arms out, easing the tension from his limbs. 'Easier to control a child, I suppose.' He said tiredly. 'Easier to mould them to your whim – Speck was always rather fond of that.'

'Control to what ends?' Fran queried him, prodding gently as Vaan and Penelo scampered off to harass the trader Luccio about his wares. Balthier shook his head and waved a hand in a frustrated, dismissive gesture.

'I don't know,' he sighed sitting on the rim of one of the water shrine fountains dotting the rest area. Fran perched beside him. 'I never knew what the bastard wanted; only that it was something more than wealth alone.'

They were quiet for a time, listening and watching Penelo and Vaan haggle prices with Luccio. Penelo turned around and brandished one of the new model handguns, a Dalmascan Arkon Reach, if Balthier was any judge. She mouthed a price to him and he nodded tiredly. Penelo grinned and turned back to close the transaction.

'To Tchita we go?' Fran asked finally.

'Hmm,' Balthier was thinking about these new fangled pistols versus his old style rifle guns. The pistols were lighter, faster, and had the advantage of being easier to conceal. Conversely rifles were more accurate, more powerful and had considerably greater range. Balthier preferred his rifles, but was determined to master pistols all the same. Penelo liked the pistols better. He'd probably let the girl keep the new Arkon once he was done with it.

'We will attend this slave market?' Fran prodded.

'Yes,' Balthier agreed, 'Though I doubt we'll be so lucky as to find the girl there. If Speck's got her he has no need to tout her at a skin market.'

Fran cocked her head questioningly. 'He would not trade as well as buy?'

Balthier glanced at his partner then. It was easy to forget sometimes the great and vast expanse of Fran's experience compared to his own. She had no doubt seen, perhaps even found herself trapped, in any number of slave markets before now. The degradations of Ivalice were nothing new to her. Not for the first time Balthier wondered why she persisted in staying amid the humes, and didn't instead find some nice wooded Glenn to make her home far from everyone and their woes.

'No,' Balthier answered her question, 'Unless he has changed markedly since our brief acquaintance, I cannot believe he would sully himself thus.'

'Yet he will buy all the same.' Fran pointed out calmly. 'Is that not contradiction?'

Balthier shrugged and contrived a smirk for her benefit, 'And thusly Speck can add hypocrisy to his list of crimes.' He flapped a hand, watching the children conclude their business with Luccio. 'The Speck I knew was an egotist of the highest order. He would not see the correlation between buying slaves and trading in them.'

'And you?' Fran asked him keenly.

Balthier frowned at her genuinely perplexed, 'I don't deal in the slave trade.'

'This I know,' Fran almost smiled faintly, 'But your eyes tell truths your mouth does not. Fine fire I see there, and I wonder, is it wise to set tinder to spark? Should you see Speck at this market would you have sense to remember your senses, I wonder?'

Balthier's smirk this time was more genuine, 'Of course I bloody won't.' He rose to stand, as the children hurried over, and reached out a hand to help Fran up. She didn't need the help and refused the aid, but the gesture was all that mattered.

'That's why I have you Fran, for any fool can see I don't have the sense I was born with.'

Fran's eyes lit with shared humour. 'As well you remember it pirate,' she admonished him.

Balthier tossed his head, spirits lifting, 'Fran please,' he scoffed, 'My need of your good counsel is, I am sure, the one thing I shall never forget.'

* * *

**709 O.V: Rabanastre Palace – Mother's Day**

Ashe tossed and turned in her bed. She was dreaming and almost aware of the fact, nevertheless she could not wake. She dreamed of her wedding day. She dreamed of her wedding night.

She dreamed that instead of riding in a grand parade, part of a glittering cavalcade rolling through the streets of Rabanastre in her feathered and lace finery, her beautiful silk and finest cotton gown and veil, she was naked as a new born. Naked and sweating, shivering as hundreds, thousands, of leering men grasped at her flesh. Dirty, questing fingers touched her in places she had granted no man, save her husband, permission to touch her. She tried to escape but strong arms held her.

'Rasler, please, let me go.' She pleaded with her sweet faced but firm husband. 'Can you not see what they are doing to me?'

'Yes my dear,' Rasler told her in his forthright manner, 'But you see they must do this.'

'Why?' Ashe almost wailed as she tried to wriggle back from the thousands and thousands of grabbing, filthy hands, and the sick, lustful eyes of the people. 'Stop it. Stop it. I am your queen – how dare you?'

'But, my dear, that is why they do this.' Rasler told her, 'For you are their queen and yet you give the kingdom no heir and refuse all offers of marriage.'

'I am married,' she screamed, 'I am married to you! Damn you, let me go!'

'But you must breed, my darling one, Dalmasca must have more Dynast heirs; you are not enough.'

Ashe tore free of Rasler's hold on her, kicking out at the grasping hands rising like a tide all around her.

'Not enough?' she parroted outrage and horror warring for dominance within her, 'I saved Dalmasca. I fought to restore my kingdom – why is that not enough?'

'Because,' a cool erudite and distinctly Archadian voice purred in her ear as gauntleted hands dropped down onto her bare shoulders from behind, 'the people don't want _you_.'

Ashe twisted around trying to ascertain the identity of this new threat. She saw a long sweep of purest black hair fall past her shoulder as the stranger leaned in to whisper in her ear, 'All they want, all they ever wanted, was your _womb_.'

Her new aggressor twisted her around abruptly, fast enough to make her dizzy, and released her, stepping back to stand side by side with Rasler. Ashe gasped and recoiled in horror to see Vayne Solidor in all his twisted glory shoulder to shoulder with her beloved and lamented husband.

'No,' she whispered teetering backwards perilously close to the waiting ocean of filthy grasping hands, 'No, no, I won't believe you.' She clapped her hands to the side of her head and tried to keep the tears at bay. 'I won't believe you – my people love me.'

Rasler smiled at her, his small, quiet smile that she used to think was just for her and her alone. 'Of course they do my heart. They own you, after all.'

Vayne sneered, tossing his hair behind his shoulders. 'You are nothing but a tool; first of the Occuria and now to the peasants. Your crown is but a chain leashing you to your fate.' Vayne shook his head, 'Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca, you are nothing but a stubborn brood mare who refuses to foal.'

'No.' Ashe could only stare in horror, her own hands pressed to her abdomen, as Rasler moved towards her, still smiling his sweet smile.

'Alas there is no seed to get from a dead man, my dearest.' He grasped her by the shoulders and she was too stunned to react against him. 'Thus to the wolves you must go – and pray your stubbornness has not made you barren.'

Then her husband, her dearest beloved Rasler, pushed her off the wedding float and into that writhing nest of questing fingers and groping hands.

'_No_!' Ashe sat bolt upright in her bed. Tears streaked her cheeks and she was trembling in cold sweats. For the longest moment she could do naught else but breathe in and out and watch the moonshard light glide across her darkened bed chamber to paint the smooth walls silver white. It was a dream, just a horrid, horrid dream. Ashe forced herself to calm down, forced herself to forget the dark tendril memories of hands on her body, groping and prodding and invading. She pressed the fingers of her ringed hand to her mouth to keep in the whimpers.

Across the counterpane of her bed lay, caught in the wrinkles of her sheets and thrown hither and thither by her movements in bed, a number of documents she had been perusing before sleep. She picked the nearest parchment up and almost screamed.

It was a proposal of marriage; or at least the proposal that negotiations for a marriage between Ashe herself and the Arch-Duke Ferlando of Nandoolan Rozzaria should begin at once. Without looking Ashe knew that all the other parchments contained similar entreaties from all the principalities and minor kingdoms of Ivalice.

Systematically and with controlled violence Ashe tore to tiny shreds every single one of the proposals until her bed was littered with little pieces of paper. Almost accusingly she looked directly across the expanse of her chamber to the portrait of Rasler that hung on the opposite wall.

'A marriage of convenience, of politics, you said.' She wiped angrily at her tears, 'I told you then that I would play my part and gladly – but _you_ – you did not play yours! You died and now expect me to marry again? And to what, open my legs to any man who can get me with child? I am not a whore! I married in good faith. In my heart I will always be your wife.'

Ashe threw two fistfuls of the crumpled crumbs of paper outward towards the portrait, but of course the insubstantial wisps, fluttered uselessly to the floor long before reaching her target.

Ashe threw herself back down into her bed and wrenched up the paper littered sheets around her chin. She gnawed on the nails of one hand and tried to force herself into the oblivion of sleep.

Of all the things she had faced, of all the grief and hardship, the horrors and ignominy she had endured, nothing had ever scared her more than the thought of re-marriage. To be trapped in a loveless marriage was beyond cruelty after all she had done for her country, but the thought of allowing herself to love again, of opening herself up again to the potential devastation of loss she had felt upon Rasler's death – that was truly more than Ashe could likely survive. The thought of bearing children that too might die, as all her brothers had, was also something that made her sick to her barren innards.

Ashe loved her country, she would die for Dalmasca, but she would not, could not, become Dalmasca's whore……even if her obstinacy cost her the throne she had fought so hard for.

* * *

**709 O.V: Rabanastre South Gate - Mothers Day **

A tall man in a wayfarers cowl and long battered coat moved swiftly through the south gate plaza and past the fountain centre piece. His strides were long and swift, his shoulders broad, his head bowed. He moved like a man who wanted to avoid notice, but his height and something about his bearing set him apart from the few people still up and about in south gate at this late hour of the night.

Underneath the man's long coat of nondescript brown it was possible to see flashes of the bright blue garb favoured by the religious order of the Kiltias. There were a lot of Kiltias in Rabanastre, for Dalmasca kept to the ways of Faram, and the people watching the stranger thought that the man would do a better job of remaining unnoticed if he put aside his poor disguise and simply travelled as the Kiltias he was. Unless, of course, the suspicious residents of south gate mused, the man had some particular reason to want to hide his face?

The stranger paused as he studied the various winding ways around this ancient city; he had a map, but this was not a city like Archades, which had been designed with a particular plan and organised so that air craft and foot traffic could pass through with ease. Instead Rabanastre was a rabbit warren of higgledy-piggledy winding byways and alleys that could have a stranger walking in circles for hours.

This man happened to be one such stranger and he was lost already.

People called him Brother Ili, but in truth he was not fully ordained within the order of the Kiltias. His name was not Ili either. Not that any of that mattered, for his business here in the Dynast city had nothing to do with spreading the word of Faram. No, his mission was of slightly more personal import.

As he stood staring at his unhelpful map one of the watching locals, a jovial seeq, ambled over.

'You lost?' he asked cheerfully.

'Yes,' He who was known as Ili smiled dryly, 'I am new to this city.'

The Seeq was instantly on guard when he heard the unspeakable cadence of highbrow Archadian in the man's inflection, 'You Imperial?' he demanded.

Although things were improving there was still a great many Rabanastrans who hated all things Archadian. Ili shook his head, keeping his face downcast and canted so that the hood of his cowl kept his features in shadow.

'Born in Archades,' he corrected, 'but never Imperial. To the Kiltias I give my allegiance.' This is no less than the truth; to a certain degree at any rate. It is the sort of careful evasion that Ili has become adept at over the years.

'Begging your pardon, good sir, I am looking for the residence of a man called Vaan, sometimes known as Ratsbane, and a young woman named Penelo. Do you know where I might find them?'

The seeq blinked in surprise. Everyone knew Ratsbane and Penelo; they were heroes. 'You know them?' he asked sharply not about to send an odd Imperial stranger to the Bahamut heroes' door.

The hooded man shook his head, 'No,' he lied, though it was true that his acquaintance with the two Dalmascans was scant, 'but I am sent by one who does.' The man Ili said no more. He would not betray confidences. The seeq watched him keenly.

'Bit late for a social visit, don't you think?'

Ili smiled in strained manner, not that it was visible behind his cowl. 'Yes…..I have not had an easy journey. I have come from Hindleheim in northern Archadia.'

'Hindle…what? Never heard of it.' The seeq grunted.

Ili smiled again and his good humour touched his voice with easy charm, 'It is a very small town; not much there but sheep and a chapel.' And Ili was missing it already.

The seeq gave him a look, 'Archadians don't take to Faram.' He looked pointedly down the length of Ili's body where his coat had opened to reveal his Kiltias blues.

Ili chuckled in self-deprecating manner, 'True but the sheep are surprisingly devout.'

This made the seeq laugh and he obviously decided then that Ili was not all that bad even if he was an Imperial. In quick order the seeq rapped out a succession of incomprehensible directions and then, sensing Ili's incomprehension, kindly marked off the route to Ratsbane's house on Ili's map.

Ili bowed to the seeq in the kiltias fashion, 'My thanks to you; may Faram guide and watch over you.'

Ili left swiftly then, and although he took a few wrong turns along the way, he soon found himself outside the door of the modest house fronting the muthru bazaar. He wrapped on the door and waited.

After a short time lights appeared in an upper window and a dark head in silhouette peered out to stare at him; Ili stood back from the stoop and, careful to check there was no one about, he pulled the hood from his head so the watcher could see something of his face. Instantly the silhouette disappeared and Ili hastily pulled his hood back over his head.

Ili himself might be a stranger in this strange land, but his face was not – or rather it should be said that the features of Ili's face bore startling resemblance to a face well known in Rabanastre; a face that oft adorned any number of wanted boards and bounty notices. This fact was just one reason why Ili rarely travelled far afield from his sleepy little parish of Hindleheim; the cases of mistaken identity grew tiresome. Also it was somewhat counter-productive for a missionary to be regularly carted off to goal for crimes committed by that other who wore a face very similar to his own.

Moments later the front door was flung open and a sleep rumbled Penelo stood bare foot in her nightgown on the stoop.

'Vassili?' she asked of him.

'Yes,' he agreed swiftly, strangely grateful to hear his given name spoken aloud. 'Please, let me in, I have news.'

She stepped back and ushered him into the small, but cheerful, and cosy home. Vaan was just clattering down the stairs trying to fasten the draw strings of his trousers at the same time. When he tripped Ili was not surprised.

'Have you found them?' The boy demanded as Penelo swiftly shut the door behind him. 'Have you found Fran and Balthier?'

Ili paused, finally freeing himself of the heavy cowl now that hiding his face was not an issue. He gathered his thoughts while he unwound the drape of cloth from his neck and shoulders.

'Vaan – don't be rude. Let him catch his breath.' Penelo hurried to take the cowl from him and hung it on a hook by the wall, 'Are you hungry or thirsty? Can I get you anything?' she asked him concerned.

Ili smiled faintly and shook his head, 'No thank you, I am fine.' He lied politely before focusing on Vaan's questions. He hesitated a moment before deciding that it was best to get straight to the point.

'I know where Fran is,' he told the two Dalmascan's and watched the light of relief and joy light in their faces, 'she is hurt but will recover – thank Faram.' He hastened to add lest they worry.

'She came to me in Hindleheim and asked me to come to you in her stead for she cannot, and does not dare, yet travel abroad.'

Penelo clasped her hands together against her breast tightly, 'Thank Faram,' she agreed remembering her reverence in the presence of an 'almost' priest.

Vaan would not be diverted however, 'What about Balthier?' he demanded.

Ili winced. It was still strange for him to hear that name and equate it to the Ffamran he knew. He shook his head.

'Have the two of you not heard anything?' he asked though he knew that if they had they would not be asking him for news. 'Fran bid me ask.' He added.

The two children shook their heads. Penelo twisted her hands together nervously, 'They found the Strahl floating off Bhujerba. Ashe found out and had it brought to Dalmasca for safe keeping.' She stared at Ili with large sad eyes, 'We thought for sure they were both dead when we found out the Strahl was abandoned.'

Ili shook his head. 'Fran ditched the ship deliberately to throw off the scent. She chose Bhujerba because she thought Ondore would look kindly on the vessel.' He assured them and then frowned.

'I wonder, however, why Queen Ashe sent for the Strahl? I am not sure that it is a good idea to have the ship so near the two of you. You might yet be targets of Speck and his Company.'

Vaan stepped forward then and grabbed Ili's arm, 'Forget about that.' He demanded angrily. 'What about Balthier?' He repeated his earlier question very succinctly.

Ili sighed and shook his head, 'I don't know. _Fran_ does not know.'

Ili pulled free of Vaan and walked over to one of the worn but comfortable looking chairs. He sank into it without invitation, giving in to his fatigue. The Dalmascans' furnishings reflected their characters; bright and warm, welcoming, yet oddly disorganised.

'Fran cannot remember all that happened to herself and Balthier when they went against Adonis Speck; she suspects that her memories have been tampered with somehow.'

Ili sat forward and dropped his head into his hands. 'Fran says….' He hesitated, struggling to get the words out. They were as implausible to him now as he prepared to speak them aloud as they had been when he heard them from the Viera herself.

'She says what?' Vaan pressed tension making his face pale.

Ili lifted his head and met Vaan's eyes head on, 'The Viera says she thinks she has killed him. Fran fears that she has murdered Balthier.'

Neither Dalmascan could speak a word. Their eyes widened impossibly and both shook their heads in speechless denial. Ili's expression hardened in a scowl that was instantly recognisable to anyone who had ever met any of the Bunansa family men folk.

'She thinks he is dead.' He said again, harshly. 'The Viera thinks _my brother_ is dead.'


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Seven: 709 O.V: Rabanastre – Mother's Day (late night)**

Penelo laid out a light meal of cold meats, fruit, and cheese as the night drew long. Vaan paced across the threadbare rug flung over the bare boards of the living room while Ili sat in the chair and rubbed out the kinks in his legs.

'The Lady Ashe has not attempted to speak with either of you about the Strahl?' He asked again as Penelo poured a glass of fresh squeezed fruit juice for him and proffered the platter of food.

'No,' she said. 'We thought about going to see her, but we weren't sure if we should.' She admitted. Vaan stopped his pacing.

'Tomaj said that Ashe demanded the Strahl be brought here because we'd take care of it. She told Ondore that Balthier would come to Rabanastre to look for his ship.'

Ili frowned and sat forward, snagging a slice of apple, 'Could she know something?'

Vaan and Penelo exchanged glances. Both Dalmascan's shrugged in non-committal fashion.

'Dunno.' Vaan admitted. 'It was Fran's idea that we come back here and lay low because the Company didn't have a presence in Rabanastre, but I don't think Ashe would know anything. Why would she know anything about Speck?'

Ili shook his head, 'Not about Speck.' He examined an odd wafer thin slice of pale odourless Dalmascan cheese, before deciding what the hell and popping it into his mouth. The taste he found was inoffensive, if somewhat bland. 'I meant about Balthier. Are they close?'

Ili felt some embarrassment posing the question, not just because he would rather not know his younger brother's intimate affairs, but also because he really didn't know all that much about 'Balthier'. The little boy he had abandoned to face their father's over-bearing possessiveness alone all those years ago was a very different creature to the man Ffamran had made of himself.

Vaan seemed confused by the delicately phrased question. 'No.' He said and then frowned, 'What do you mean by close?'

Penelo had a better answer, 'I think Ashe would help him if she could.' She popped a deep red grape into her mouth and chewed carefully before continuing. 'They got pretty close when we all travelled together.'

She saw something in Ili's face because she hastened to add. 'Not that way. I mean that Ashe really trusted Balthier a lot and he didn't let her down. I think that's the sort of thing that Ashe would remember.'

She thought some more as she plucked up a slice of cheese and another handful of grapes, 'I don't know that Balthier feels all that close to Ashe though. I mean he never talked about her or anything afterward.'

Ili thought about this. He remembered that his brother had spoken to _him_ about Ashe, and considering how rarely he saw Balthier or Fran these days that made it significant. Ffamran had never been one to waste time on trivialities and Balthier was no less impatient. Ili smiled faintly.

'With my brother it's the people he _doesn't_ speak of that are important,' he murmured and then chuckled softly. 'Fran as always, being the exception that makes the rule, here.' He added as a caveat.

'What do you mean?' Vaan asked curiously. 'You think Ashe knows something?'

Ili rose from his chair to walk to the mantelpiece, needing to move as he thought things through. 'Hypothetically, let's say that Fran is right about the memory tampering.' He began in reasonable tones. 'I can think of numerous strategic reasons for Speck to try and convince Fran that Balthier is dead, and vice versa.'

He paused deliberately for effect. He had given enough sermons to know the importance of a well placed pause, after all. 'Those reasons become manifold if both of them are alive somewhere, having escaped Speck's grasp once, but having subsequently been separated.'

'Yeah,' Vaan agreed suddenly, 'Because if they're both thinking they killed the other they'll spend more time trying to figure out what happened than fighting Speck.'

Ili turned around to smile at Vaan. 'Exactly.' He agreed pleased with the boy.

'Speck has a pretty good understanding of how Balthier thinks. He's proved this; it isn't often my brother is bested in a game of wits, but he has been this time.' A slight scowl touched his brow for a moment before Ili shook it off and continued with his explanation.

'Let's say Speck extended the same thinking to Fran; he will expect them, assuming they have both escaped his clutches, to go to ground, hide, and try to find each other.'

Vaan and Penelo were listening attentively as they both munched cold cuts and vine fruit. Vaan swallowed his rather large mouthful, 'True, true…..so…..umm….' a perplexed look crossed his face, 'So…..what does it mean?'

'So,' Ili explained patiently, 'Speck is going to wait for one or both of them to come out of hiding. He probably knew he wouldn't be able to predict where they would hide out. Fran came to me, which makes some sense, but almost no one knows about me in the circles pirates travel.'

Ili's lips quivered with amusement. His brother and Fran had always been scrupulously careful about keeping things that way. It was testament to how important Vaan and Penelo were to Balthier that he had introduced them to Ili at all.

'The question that the three of us have to answer is this,' Ili stated, 'Where would Balthier go? Where would he feel safe? Who would he trust to help him when he had no one else he could turn to?'

Vaan's brow furrowed deeply, 'Don't you or Fran know that? I mean, if he didn't try to get to you, and he's not with Fran, and he's not with me and Pen where else would he go?'

Ili smiled wryly, 'Where indeed.'

Where indeed; would the pirate Balthier, the ultimate iconoclast, turn to a monarch, a figurehead for the type of ancient institution all pirates and free men distained, when he needed shelter? Did Ffamran have some greater tie to the Lady Ashe than mere circumstance and brief comradeship years past? Ili couldn't be sure. He knew too little about the man his younger brother now was to speculate. As always a wave of shame came over him and Ili brushed it away. What was done was done. He could not undo the harm his choices had wrought upon his brother.

Ili sighed, 'And we have to assume that Balthier knows Speck is waiting for him to surface, so he's going to avoid seeking aid from any of the usual suspects; thus we can rule out Balfonheim or even Jules in Old Archades.'

Penelo twisted her hands together nervously. 'Do you think maybe we should go and visit Ashe?' She asked tentatively clearly following Ili's reasoning.

Ili returned to his chair and sank into it gratefully, 'I think _I _should make the acquaintance of her majesty, certainly.' He admitted dryly.

'In fact the sooner I can make her ladyship's acquaintance the better; for I fear that bringing the Strahl to Dalmasca is like waving a red flag to a behemoth. I do not want to bring Speck and his Company down on Rabanastre.'

The two Rabanastran natives paled. Penelo swallowed her mouthful with difficulty and Vaan nodded his head.

'We'll find a way to get you to Ashe; first thing in the morning.'

* * *

**708 O.V: Tchita Highlands**

Under a blazing hot sun, upon the plains and hillocks of the Uplands of Tchita a rather worried neophyte sky pirate turned to her bosom buddy and childhood company and whispered rather loudly:

'We're not really going to buy slaves are we?'

'Of course not, Pen.' Her companion replied in bluffly confident tones that did not even feign an attempt at stealth. 'I bet we're going to go down there any minute and rescue all the slaves; it's the sort of thing good sky pirates do.'

Balthier's fingers quivered on the trigger of his rifle. He closed his eyes against the hot sun, the buzz of various biting insects, the residue stink of Marlboro Overkings clinging to the still air and the irritation of Vaan and Penelo's chatter. Could they really not see that now was hardly the time for inane jabbering? Had they not learned to shut up in the past year, even for a blasted half hour?

'I could cast Silencega.' Fran suggested in the barest murmur her ears twitching as she lay beside him in the long grass at the edge of the high cleft overlooking the Highlands. Fran always knew how to make him better.

Balthier sighed, releasing some of his pent up tension. 'No, they'd only panic and give our position away.' He murmured too low for the two drivelling adolescents to hear him. He shifted irritably in the scratchy grass to rub at his eyes with the heel of his hand. It was blisteringly hot and intolerably humid and Balthier hated it.

'As you say,' Fran murmured. 'Mayhap I could cast immobilise also?' She suggested as, for reasons best known to themselves, Vaan had flung a handful of dead grass at Penelo who screeched like Steeling and tried to smack Vaan across the head.

Balthier turned his gaze away from the children's antics with a disgusted roll of his eyes. 'I'll take the suggestion under advisement.' He smiled briefly at Fran before turning his attention to the activity below.

Down below their vantage point the slavers were setting up market in one of the circular stone ruins dotting the highlands. The wares, all chained together at wrist and ankle, were already being lined up in serried rows behind a makeshift partition as slavers cobbled together a rough stage. Lines of benches were being stretched out over the grass before the stage for the bidders.

'They have high expectations.' Fran pointed out in a dry whisper nodding her head towards the rows of pews.

Balthier pursed his lips grimly but refrained from comment. From his position he could still see the collection of slaves, some of them children no more than seven or eight years of age. It lit a cold fuse of rage in his breastbone. His trigger finger twitched again but he controlled the impulse.

Overhead an airship swooped low. Hidden under a veil of arcane Vanishga magick Balthier was confident that he, Fran, and the children would be safe from detection (assuming no one came close enough to hear the brats babbling on that is). The airship, a non-descript and serviceable Rozzarian model, landed on the cleft of the next rise. Fran handed him the binoculars and Balthier squinted through the magnifying lenses.

'Not our man,' he sighed lowering the binoculars. Fran twitched her ears trying to detect any speech from below. She did not need the binoculars.

Balthier lifted the device to his eyes once again and watched a ruddy faced Rozzarian in brilliant silks stalk through the long grasses towards the market. He was trailed by his own retinue of slaves dressed in what Balthier assumed was the family livery. The turquoise and agate colour scheme clashed with the rusted collars of magick imbued metal around the slaves' necks.

Balthier turned his gaze away. One of the hardest lessons of adulthood was learning that one man can not change the world; no matter how much he might wish to.

From the direction of Sochen a group of men on chocobo rode towards the market; these were Archadians by the looks of it and it was harder to tell, in this gentrified gathering, who was slave and who was master in this group.

'Finally,' Vaan groaned as he dropped down in the grass beside Balthier, 'About time something happened around here.' Without asking permission he snatched up the binoculars and peered through them. Balthier refrained from comment or any form of punitive action in response. Penelo quietly settled down next to Fran on Balthier's far side. She made an effort to pitch her voice low.

'How can all this happen without Archades knowing about it?' Penelo asked, 'I can't be believe Larsa approves of all this.'

'It is much the same as the bandits that work the Mosphoran without your Queen's knowledge,' Fran pointed out smoothly. 'What the Emperor does not know, he cannot stop.'

'Shouldn't we tell him?' Penelo demanded watching as the market began to fill up with a number of well dressed men (and a very few women) taking their places on the wooden benches.

'Not today,' Fran soothed, 'For today we have other concerns.'

* * *

**709 O.V: Palace of Rabanastre – Day of Our Fathers**

Ashe flipped through the huge pile of official papers waiting for her signature as she sat in seclusion in her private study. Sometimes she grew so sick of signing her own name that she actually longed for the days when to speak her true name was to invite instant death. The days of her exile in the sewers had actually developed a rosy patina of nostalgia faced with this endless ennui. Ashe could not wait to open her newly established parliament so that she could devolve some responsibility for the minutiae of rule to them.

Ashe had known all her life that to rule was not an easy existence to lead – but she had not realised how stifling and lonely it could be. The thought that she would likely spend the rest of her life alone with this responsibility was one she did not want to dwell over much on. To stand firm and resolute without the aid of a king or husband was one thing (and something Ashe secretly relished) but to be lonely forever, that was considerably less edifying.

She came by yet another proposition for an alliance between Dalmasca and some such place while rooting through the papers; another alliance forged with the currency of her womanhood. Ashe tore it up in the same manner she had disposed of all the other demands for her hand in marriage and the use of her Dynast bloodline.

Of all the great things she might dream to gift her kingdom it was galling indeed that it should seem that all Ivalice was only interested in her ability to breed – and with whom she might choose, or be forced, to do so with.

'I am not a brood mare.'

Ashe propped her chin against her palm and her elbow on the table top. She released a long breath, upsetting a lank tendril of hair that had fallen into her eyes. She shuffled the papers about her in dilatory fashion once more like a prophetess might consult her cards. She picked up her quill pen and she put it down again immediately. She sighed once more. Her eyes ached from the previous sleepless night and her head throbbed with the buzz of irritation that had been with her all day. She stifled a yawn.

'It is not wrong to want to hold something of myself back from my people. I am young yet, there is no need to be in haste to find a consort, or to think of children.' Ashe told the still and slightly musty air of her study as she tried to stifle another yawn.

For the last three years Ashe had performed the duties of monarch, chief adjudicator of her law courts, arbitrator in disputes between her aristocracy, first ambassador promoting the interests of Dalmasca to foreign parties, primary driver of most of the recent reforms to her country…..in essence Ashe had been working herself ragged to prove that she had a right to the throne she had worked so hard to reclaim. She had tried to prove to her people, from the lowest to the highest, that she could fill the void left by her father and by brave and just Prince Rasler.

It had never escaped her knowledge that, birthright irrespective, Ashe had been raised to be a wife, a mother, a progenitor of Raithwall's line, but not, as a future ruler; that was why she had been married early to a prince with his own country to rule. Not only that but Ashe had been ninth in line to her father's throne; she should never have ascended to it, had all things been fair and just in life, or if but one of her brothers had lived to manhood.

It had been a twist of capricious fate that had handed her the succession and she knew that fate could take it all away from her again, should she in someway prove herself less than her father had been and her dead husband _might _have been.

Nevertheless Ashe had worked tirelessly to prove herself and to raise Dalmasca out of the dulldrums it had been in post-occupation. There was much yet to do, but Ashe still believed that she had also achieved much in this short time, as well.

'A thank you wouldn't go amiss.' She murmured to herself. 'Instead all I have are proposals.'

She threw a pile of the papers across the table and folded her arms across the surface of her work space before dropping her head onto the cradle her forearms made upon the table, like a child.

A shadow detached himself from the thick damask draperies hanging from the balcony doorway directly behind Ashe. He had been watching unnoticed for a short while and had found Ashe's conversation with herself rather illuminating indeed.

'Having a bad day Highness?' The interloper drawled lazily.

Ashe jumped half out of her skin and leapt from her chair. Her heart trapped in her throat, she pressed a hand to her chest in surprise and clenched her other fist in instant annoyance.

'Balthier,' she spat the name between clenched teeth as if it were the filthiest of curses. 'What are you doing here?' She demanded heatedly.

The pirate, who was dressed in a simple pair of wayfarers leathers and a white cotton shirt Palia had found for him when he flatly refused to wear a Dalmascan vest, leaned against the wall of her study and flicked his eyes around the room curiously.

'Loitering furtively, Majesty,' He replied blandly. He flicked his gaze to her. 'Nice room.'

Ashe clenched her jaw and refrained from doing something inappropriate and violent. 'What if someone had seen you?' She hissed. 'How could you be so stupid as to wander through the halls of my palace?'

'Had someone seen me, then I might have been in some bother.' Balthier replied with infuriating nonchalance as he wandered toward the floor to ceiling book shelves that had survived from her father's day. He ran a finger over the spines of some of the older, thicker tomes lining an upper shelf. 'That is why I took pains not to be seen.'

'You are reckless.' Ashe snapped. 'You could bring all manner of trouble down on both our heads.' She paused and considered the man before her. He was much improved, but he was still pale and there was a tension in the way he held himself that spoke of pain being ignored.

'Balthier,' She sighed and spoke a little less acerbically. 'Should you even be out of bed? You have only been fever free for a day.'

Balthier tugged free one of the books that had been part of her father's library from the shelf with an appreciative sigh and carefully opened the covers. 'Nice; very nice,' He murmured deliberately ignoring her words of a moment before, 'A first addition?'

He whistled and cast a sly look her way holding out the volume. 'I could find you a buyer for this book willing to pay very handsomely.'

Ashe gave him a droll look, 'No thank you.'

She flopped back into her chair as Balthier carefully returned the book to its place. She scratched irritably at her hairline; she felt prickling and uncomfortable and it did nothing to improve her poor temper. She didn't want to be snappish and sharp with Balthier, she truly didn't, no matter how he often he incited such reactions from her.

'You know,' he told her casually as he ambled over to lean against her desk facing her as she sat back in her chair. 'Had I known the palace of Rabanastre contained such treasures as this library I would not have bothered with a mere trinket like the Goddess Magicite.' His lips twitched and his eyes danced; he was trying to goad her.

Ashe simply shook her head too tired for his games, as much as she might enjoy playing them another time.

'You should not be in here Balthier.' She told him leadenly staring sightlessly at the piles of papers covering her work desk. 'It seems passing strange to me that you would demand asylum in a place you hoped your enemies would not think to look for you only to then risk exposure with this foolishness.'

Balthier shrugged, 'I thought I'd give you the courtesy, Highness, of saying goodbye.' He unfolded his arms to pluck at the ordinary cuffs of the old shirt he wore. 'You have returned my ship to me and sheltered me while I was invalid, and for that I am grateful but,' he said tone changing, 'I have taken up enough of your time already and so shall depart.'

Ashe looked up at him sharply, 'You are leaving – now?'

Balthier smirked, 'Hmm, and early too.' His look was openly teasing. 'No need to put your reputation at risk a moment longer than I have to, after all.'

He straightened up and walked from the desk to the balcony, pulling back the heavy drapes to peer out at the royal gardens below.

'I had thought you'd be relieved. I have taken up only four and half of my allotted seven days sanctuary, but I sense my welcome is all but worn out as is.'

Ashe hesitated, 'Balthier – I…' she gave up that line of conversation for she was not sure where she wanted it to end. She tried another. 'What is your plan? Do you have any clearer recollection of what was done to you? Do you know where you shall find Fran?'

Balthier cocked his head to the side still looking out of the balcony doors; the gesture reminded Ashe powerfully of the missing Viera.

'Yes and no,' he conceded honestly enough. 'What I think I remember is enough for me to extrapolate certain facts. I am almost certain that Fran is alive, for I am almost certain that I had separated from her before I was taken by Speck and his brutes.'

Ashe's attention sharpened, 'What do you mean?'

Balthier took a breath and turned to face her again. He re-crossed his arms over his chest and was quiet a moment. 'There was a little girl. Her name was – _is_ - Jassalinda. Speck had her father and her mother killed and took her as a slave. Fran and I were charged with retrieving the girl.'

Ashe was appalled but also confused. 'Charged by whom?'

He flapped a hand. 'Best you don't know.' He told her dismissively. 'For what a monarch does not know she cannot oppose.' He smirked, but his eyes were serious.

Ashe studied him for a long moment and then nodded slowly, 'Very well pirate. I will take your word on that, for you have always played me true before now.'

She sighed and considered a less touchy question. 'This man Speck, the man you say has done all this to you,' she gestured airily to encompass all Balthier's recent misfortune, 'You say he is using children for his cruel ends?'

Balthier nodded. 'Yes.' He met her eyes. 'The man would call himself a visionary.' He told her in a tired and almost world weary tone of voice she had only ever heard before when he had spoken of his father. Ashe was instantly alert for that reason alone.

'A visionary; what is his vision?'

Balthier met her eyes and his own were naked with fatigue, 'That the children are our future, and any man who controls our children, controls us all.'

* * *

**708 O.V: Tchita Highlands**

Balthier sucked in a sharp breath, instantly alert. From the northwest, beyond Archades, an airship made her approach above the highlands. Balthier recognised the make and design, just as he recognised the discreet ornamentation. He grew instantly tense as he watched the ship circle overhead and come to dock about two hundred feet from his hiding spot.

Roughly Balthier snatched the binoculars away from Vaan who was playing with them like a child.

'Hey! I was….'

He wiped off the smeared lenses and brought the binoculars up to his face as the ship's exit ramp lowered and her passengers disembarked. A group of five people, all dressed in black from the caps on their heads and the masks over their faces to the tips of their toes, gathered around the vessel. Balthier noted that from build and height alone none of these black clad individuals could be full grown. It was hard to tell gender because they all looked identical, but as all stood lanky and strangely fragile in appearance he would not have put them above Vaan and Penelo's age, perhaps younger. They were an incongruous sight in their complete darkness against the blinding sunlight and emerald green grasses of the Tchita.

'The eponymous _'Blackies_' one presumes.' Balthier murmured quietly waiting almost with bated breath for the last occupant of the vessel to exit.

Finally another figure appeared in the hatchway of his airship; the man was instantly recognisable to Balthier. Staring at the man Balthier hissed a hitched breath like an angered python. His lips curled in a certain savage grimace as he stared at Adonis Speck through his binoculars for the first time in six years.

As always the man's profound ordinariness struck Balthier as he watched Speck, dressed in dull browns and greens, a sun hat perched on his small head, disembark his ship and activate the cloaking device. Evil should look distinctive, Balthier decided; evil should wear the face of a soulless Vayne Solidor or a wretched Gabranth. It was unfair that someone as odious as Speck should appear so very, very genial; so completely harmless. The man looked like someone's well-meaning but simple uncle. He did not look like a cold blooded killer.

Like a dark cloud of over-grown insects Speck's black guard swarmed protectively around him as the man, leaning on his sandalwood cane, made his sedate way towards the market. He passed by close enough to Balthier that he could be heard humming a Rozzarian drinking song under his breath. Balthier watched Speck with single-minded concentration; he did not blink until the man and his personal guard reached the ruin where the market was to be staged, further down the hill.

'Right,' Balthier threw down the binoculars and jumped to his feet and turned to Fran who had risen when he did. 'Let's go.'

'Go where?' Vaan called after him and then, 'Wait that's not the way to the slave market.'

Balthier ignored him and instead jogged easily over the undulating ground to where Speck had left his cloaked ship. Fran kept pace at his side and the children laboured along behind him.

Balthier stopped abruptly once he thought he had come close enough to the camouflaged ship. He rooted about in one of his belt pouches and withdrew a small device was within. The device was small enough to fit into his palm and black as midnight except for the lines of magicite power lines running through it like veins of quartz through mountain rock. It was a nifty little disrupter; it would temporarily disable the cloak and any mechanised security measures Speck had enabled within his ship.

Balthier aimed the device in the rough direction of the craft and depressed the button.

'Whoa,' Vaan breathed as Speck's ship re-materialised in all her understated and refined cream and burnished bronze glory. Balthier rolled his eyes at the boy's naivety.

Speck's ship, which possessed no name Balthier had ever heard spoken, was the same make and model, albeit a little larger, as the Strahl. Balthier wasted no time examining the craft and instead jumped up the ramp to try the hatch door. He had picked the mechanical lock mechanism in moments.

'You two stay here,' Fran told the children, 'Maintain Vanishga and keep watch.'

'But…' Vaan objected but his aggrieved declarations were cut short when Penelo savagely elbowed him to the ribs.

'Don't worry Fran; you can count on us.' The girl assured, sounding relieved that she and Vaan wouldn't have to board the ship.

Balthier poked his head into the darkened interior of Speck's ship. The darkness inside was granted extra depth by the searing sun blazing down above Tchita. As Balthier's eyes adjusted to the change in light he saw dancing after images in shades of bright blue and yellow. They fell like rain before his eyes; populating the darkness with weird and wonderful designs.

Fran stepped up behind him and cast a protectga and shellga spell over the both of them. Balthier activated the Libra spell on the bracelet he wore around his wrist. He stepped into the entryway and briskly moved towards the rear of the craft where the engine rooms and the left and right glossair ring manual controls should be situated.

The inside of Speck's ship had a nasty musty spell to it, like soured milk and dead skin; Fran was not the only one to wrinkle their nose and try not to breathe in too deeply. As Balthier walked forward, keeping his weight on the balls of his feet and not his heels so he made no more noise than was unavoidable, he noticed that there was also sand on the metal floors of the main gantry.

He turned to glance a question to Fran over his shoulder when they reached the bulkhead door leading to the flight of stairs descending into the engine room. Hear anything, he asked silently. Fran shook her head. He tapped his nose; smell anything? Fran paused, tilted her head to the side, nostrils flaring, and then gave a nonchalant roll of her right shoulder; a gesture too refined to be classed as a shrug.

Balthier pursed his lips. He interpreted Fran's gesture to mean that there were scents present, but she that could not tell if they were residue from Speck and his crew just departed, or whether the scents intimated the presence of others still aboard the ship. Balthier sighed; they were flying blind just as always.

He forced open the lock on the bulkhead and led the way down the steps.

Balthier was on the last step before the bottom when Fran snatched at the back of his vest, caught him by the laces, and yanked him back a step. A split second later a Volcano handbomb flew through the air from the shrouded depths of the engine room and bounced on the bottom step of the stairs.

Balthier swore, realising how close the incendiary had come to hitting him, and leapt forward snuffing out the charge instants before it reached the fuse. He then swiftly retreated back up the steps to stand by Fran, the dead bomb still in hand.

They waited. Fran was still on the stairway, ears erect, senses primed, eyes trained upon one corner to the left of the engine room where a tarpaulin had been thrown over one of the secondary rivet drive aft coupling casements. The cloth shrouded, roughly square lump, was still, but Balthier thought, straining his own senses, that he could hear the soft sound of ragged breathing coming from beneath the cloth.

He exchanged a glance with Fran and hefted the defused Volcano in his hand. He jerked his head towards the tarpaulin, eyes questioning. Fran read his intent in his eyes and nodded her agreement. Balthier pulled his arm back and hurled the unlit incendiary across the engine room so it hit the top of the tarpaulin, bounced off, and hit the floor with a crack.

There was a girlish shriek of genuine terror and sudden frantic movement from underneath the tarpaulin; Balthier thought he heard the sound of metal links scraping over metal plate flooring. One end of the cloth fell in as someone underneath the makeshift tent tried to cower away from the defused bomb.

'A-ha!'

Balthier jumped down the steps and crossed the distance from the stairs to the aft coupling casement in three long bounds. He wrenched the tarpaulin clean away.

'Got you.'


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: Just a note of explanation. Beginning with this chapter I am adding another timeline: 702 into the story. This will serve as the back story of how Balthier and Speck met but will not take up too much narrative time. _

_Also there is a scene in this chapter that some might find distressing. I don't think it is too graphic but it touches on some nasty stuff (rape) and so I thought I'd leave a warning in advance._

**Chapter Eight: Memories of Another Time and Place (702 O.V.)**

It was always so wet here in the south islands; damp and hot and sweat slicked. The scent of body odour, open air cooking fires, and something sweet and vaguely sickening lingered on the still humidity. Insects buzzed in the background, dancing around the old and flickering crystal-lamps, as Ffamran sat at one of the tavern tables watching life in this out of the way corner of Ivalice pass him by.

Tournai would expect him back soon and Ffamran knew he could not contrive any more reasons to linger. He didn't really want to; it was just that he was utterly convinced that Vassili had passed through these parts some time recently. It had to be recent for that woman in saffroza to have mistaken Ffamran for his older brother.

Ffamran sighed and swirled his drink with a finger. After all this time he should just give up on ever finding his brother. He was supposed to be cutting his ties to his old life, not trying to re-forge bonds of fraternity long since severed.

He was restless, that was the trouble. Truthfully he couldn't explain why. Ffamran just knew he was filled with a sense of frustration, always percolating under the surface of his thoughts. There was no good reason for his dissatisfaction. Tournai treated him wonderfully well and he was happy working for the man making runs to and fro south Naldoa. In fact flying the southern islands, just him and the ship, was everything Ffamran had run from home to attain; it was the ultimate liberation after his time in the Judiciary ranks.

Still it just wasn't enough anymore. Ffamran wanted to stretch his wings. He wanted more than this.

Small fry Ffamran, the voice of ambition whispered in his head, you wanted to change the world, didn't you? Not going to do that smuggling grain and rice; not going to write your name across the skies of Ivalice while playing second fiddle to old man Tournai. Might as well have stayed in Archades for all the difference leaving has made. Father would laugh at you; so much for the Prodigal.

Ffamran told his inner critic to shut up and gulped down his drink. It burned his throat but Ffamran preferred it that way. He'd developed a taste for rot-gut liquor while in the Imperial Elites. If you couldn't fly a cutter while high as a cloud then you weren't much of a pilot at all, or so his instructor had told him.

Ffamran almost smiled at the bittersweet memory as he signalled the bar keep for a refill. As he did so he looked up and happened to notice a Viera, of all people, staring at him with surprising intensity from a dark corner of the tavern. The Viera did not look away when he returned her frank regard but instead stared straight into his eyes. Ffamran was surprised; most Viera he had encountered since leaving the Empire had been rather timid, sorrowful creatures. This one, however, was obviously cut from a different cloth even if she preferred to loiter in shadow. When the barkeep refilled his drink he raised the shot glass to the woman in ironic salute.

There was another commotion behind him as he lingered at the bar and just as Ffamran turned to see what was afoot a young native woman, barely more than a girl, younger even than Ffamran, over-turned an amphora of wine from a table when she leapt up from her chair. The girl said something to the very drunk swarthy man she had been sitting with, in angry tones. There were tears in the girl's eyes. The man, large and burly and decorated with a number of tribal tattoos in interesting shades of blue and green against his bronze skin, rose to stand also. He said something equally unpleasant to the woman in the same liquid sounding language of the islands.

Ffamran rolled his eyes and turned back to his drink, nothing more than a lovers' tiff.

The Viera materialised at his side. Ffamran caught the hint of mint rising from her long, loosely curling white hair. He noticed the length and sharpness of her nails as she rested her long hands on the bartop.

'I have heard you are called Ran?' The Viera's voice was interesting, the inflection strangely modulated so that even the most prosaic of questions gained strange depths of ambiguity and hidden meaning.

'Oh I get called a lot of things,' Ffamran smiled thinly, careful to maintain his appropriated Bhujerban accent. Although he had spent most of the last eighteen months since his departure from Archades immersed in Bhujerban culture – and was in fact half Bhujerban on his mother's side - it was still hard to rid himself of all the trappings of his Archadian heritage. His voice, more than his looks or his bearing, gave him away most often. He sipped his drink and turned to the Viera.

'Why do you ask?' He inquired mildly. Ffamran had never heard of the Empire hiring Viera, but a spy could be of any race, and he supposed that a Viera abroad in Ivalice was just as like as not to be motivated by avarice and take Empire's coin as any other species.

The Viera said nothing for a short time and then she asked another question, blatantly refusing to answer his. 'You are Bhujerban?'

Ffamran smiled a little more brightly but his suspicions were aroused. He knew, just knew, that this Viera suspected something about him. Could she work for Imperial customs and excise, after all? Ffamran did not really want to spend the night in an island lockup for bootlegging again. It was such a pain to either bribe his way out of charges or break out of the south islands' primitive gaols.

'Yes,' he said and thought about adding a 'bhadra' for good measure but decided against it. That might appear a trifle contrived.

He took another swallow of his drink. 'And you, lady? I come by here often and I've not seen you before.' Ffamran looked the impressively lithe and limber Viera up and down, 'I'd have remembered.' He added deliberately putting a leering lilt into his words.

The Viera twitched one ear and crossed her arms over her chest, clearly a bit annoyed by his boldness in regarding her obvious attributes. Ffamran smiled a little wider. Good. Maybe the Viera would take offence and leave him be.

Yet before the Viera could either rebuke him or rip his throat out there was a sudden crash from behind him at the bar and Ffamran turned around sharply to see what had the caused this new distraction.

The girl from earlier, she who had been arguing with the tattooed brute, was sprawled across the floor, her hands clutched to the side of her face. The big man was rubbing his knuckles and growling at the girl to get up; Ffamran did not need to understand the language well to understand that much. When the girl did not get up fast enough for the man he reached down and hauled up by the arm, his fingers digging into flesh hard enough to leave bruises. Ffamran tensed; he was seconds from intervening before he reminded himself that the last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to himself.

It wasn't his job to keep the peace here, after all. The girl was no responsibility of his. He turned away, but the skin at the nape of his neck twitched and writhed with the desire to punch that brutish thug's lights out. Bastard had no right to treat a lovely girl like that. Had Ffamran still been part of the Bureau of Law he'd have had that man up on charges and sent him for his forty lashes in an eye-blink.

The Viera was watching him and he had the strangest feeling she was trying to look into the deepest depths of his mind. He met her gaze boldly.

'If you have something to say, lady, say it and be gone with you,' He grumbled irritably. 'I do not care to be questioned and stared at by a stranger so rude as to not even give me her name.'

The Viera, much to his chagrin, did not take offence. Instead he thought that she almost smiled. 'I am Fran.' She said.

Ffamran blinked. He had not expected her to give him a name. Just who was this Viera, anyway? More pertinently why did it seem like she knew more about him than she should?

The mysterious Viera shifted her weight and pushed away from the bar. 'You and I shall speak again, smuggler. Of this I am sure.'

Ffamran watched the Viera walk out of the tavern; he was ashamed to admit it was a very arresting view, for truly this woman was a prime specimen of her race. It occurred to Ffamran that he might not mind so terribly much if this 'Fran' was correct and they did meet again.

'Bah,' Ffamran chided himself under his breath as he swirled the dregs of his drink in the bottom of his shot glass, 'She'd probably eat me alive.' He knocked back the last of his drink and contemplated the pros and cons of getting staggeringly drunk.

He was just so bored!

Caught up in his own thoughts, and keeping half an ear out for the arguing couple behind him, Ffamran failed to notice the dark haired, spectacle wearing man sitting in a far corner who watched him with an intensity that was frankly frightening.

* * *

**708 O.V: Tchita Highlands**

'Got you!' Balthier declared loudly as he wrenched away the tarpaulin and revealed the two humes huddled on the engine room floor.

'No!'

'Please don't hurt us!'

In the tiny space between the casement and the engine room wall two emaciated children cowered on the floor, wrapped in each others arms for dear life. Balthier dropped the waxed cloth and swore passionately when he saw the shackles around their bony wrists and ankles, the filth caking their ragged cloths, the abject fear in their large waif like eyes. These children were slaves. They both started to cry loudly and messily. A wave of shame passed through Balthier from his hair to his toes. He should have realised. Who else but children would hide under sack cloth?

'Shush,' Balthier pressed a finger to his lips, 'No one is going to harm you.'

He dropped down onto his knees before the children while Fran stood at his back, facing the stairway. He reached forward to check the shackles, noting as he did so the infected and broken skin around the children's wrists where the metal restraints had chafed them. The eldest of the two, a little girl, jerked away from him eyes wild.

'Don't touch me!'

Balthier held up his hands and scooted back a little. 'Alright then petal,' he murmured pitching his voice to its most soothing cadence, 'Just tell me what you are chained to back there, hmm? I promise I'll not touch you if you don't want me to.'

He could see thick and heavy chain links running around behind the children and into the shadows of the wall behind the casement. It was obvious from the smell and the filthy blankets laid out under the children, that they had been essentially leashed in place here in the engine room.

The little boy, who could not have been more than five, buried his head in the girl's shoulder and refused to look at Balthier. He was shaking so hard the chains attached to him had caught the reverberation and clattered against the floor. The girl just stared at him with silent and accusing eyes.

'Fine,' Balthier breathed out, 'Don't speak; just listen.'

He reined in his impatience and spoke slowly and clearly for the children's benefit. He fancied that these two were westerners by the looks of them, Rozzarian or some such and might not understand his Archadian inflected tongue that easily.

'My name is Balthier and this is Fran,' Balthier rooted about in his multi-purpose belt pouches and pulled out his set of lock picks and skeleton keys. 'She and I are looking for a little girl of the name Jassalinda. We think the owner of this ship has snatched her without asking first.'

Balthier dropped the skeleton keys down on the floor by the girl; he held her gaze with an act of will.

'See if you can get yourself and the boy unchained with those, hmm? Fran and I are going to search the rest of the ship.' He shrugged and watched the girl's eyes dart from him to the keys; sudden hope mingled with suspicion lit within them. Balthier almost smiled. The girl stared up at him mutely.

'You to let us go?' She asked him in stilted speech.

Balthier shrugged, 'You and the boy are not the child I'm looking for, and we have no need of slaves.'

'You look other girl, for?' The Rozzarian girl asked him. 'You not come hurt us?'

'No.' Balthier said simply. 'You two can do as you please; make a run for it, if you want, though I doubt you'll get far alone.'

Balthier shrugged again casually indifferent. He met the girl's eyes keenly and saw that even the little boy was watching him now, with large fearful eyes. 'Or you can come with me and Fran when we're done here.' Balthier added light as a feather, 'Either way, you are no concern of mine.'

True to his words Balthier rose to his feet and turned as if to leave. He met Fran's eyes and gave just the slightest jerk of his head. Fran turned around and made also for the stairs. There was a rattle and clank as the girl jumped to her feet suddenly.

'No leave us…..please!'

Balthier turned to look over his shoulder casually, 'Hmm? What was that?'

The girl, who was about eight, held onto the younger boy's hand tightly and stood shivering but brave wedged in between the casement. 'I Viola…..this Pedro….no leave us……we help you….girl to find…..yes?' The girl's eyes were frightened yet hopeful.

Balthier held his smile back from showing on his face. He shook his head. 'You children will only slow us down.' He turned back and took one small step forward.

Fran, listening intently, ascended another step on the stairs. He had never known her to take so long on a flight of stairs. Still it was important that these children choose of their own volition to come with them, and thus they had to play this game.

'No!' The girl almost shouted and Balthier was gratified to see that she had spirit still despite the cruelty she had endured as a slave. 'No…..we no slow; we fast. We help you. You no find girl on own.'

Balthier turned back, 'Oh? Is that right, hmm?'

'Yes….right. That is right.' The girl insisted and the little boy, Pedro, nodded his head vigorously. 'Speck-man bring girl here, days gone, she called Jassie. We know where take her he has.'

Balthier grinned swift and fierce. 'Perfect.'

He dropped down beside them, picked up the keys and made swift work releasing the children from their chains now they were no longer resisting him.

'There now,' he sighed satisfied as the children rubbed at their damaged wrists and flexed their ankles, 'That's better, hmm?'

'Better, yes.' Viola agreed while the little boy just stared without a word, trembling where he stood. He clutched at Viola's hand like it was a life line. Balthier frowned.

'Come here,' he crooked a finger at the boy who shied back. Balthier rolled his eyes and made the gesture again. 'Come _here_.'

After a moment the child inched closer and Balthier took hold of him so he could check the child for sickness or injury. Viola watched all this with sharp eyes.

The boy, Pedro, was barely more than skin and bones, no more substantial than a puff of air but other than needing some food and a good bath, he was not in too bad shape. The girl was in a little better shape than that, but only by a whisker. Balthier's keen eyes picked up something interesting.

'Hmm, what's this?'

Around the necks of both children hung a leather thong; a Gil coin and a tag attached to the end. Balthier flipped over the tag around Viola's neck so he could read what had been written upon it. _708 O.V: three hundred Gil – Veridree Rozzaria. _

'Hmm?' Balthier frowned pondering the meaning. He flipped the tag on the boy's neck. The date and location were the same, but clearly this child was less highly valued as a commodity for there was only a price of one hundred and fifty-five Gil written upon the tag.

'What are these about then?' He asked the two children who just stared at him with large eyes. Fran, who was standing at the top of the engine room stairs, cleared her throat deliberately.

'Balthier – time waits for no man.'

'Right,' Balthier conceded chagrined.

Without bothering to ask permission he picked up the little boy who let out a squeak but then went still when Balthier did nothing more than hold him. Balthier reached down to take Viola's hand, 'Let's get you children away from here.'

* * *

**702 O.V: Memory**

It was late when Ffamran left the tavern, but then again, it had been late when he'd entered it, so by that logic it was, in fact, very early when he stumbled out onto the bamboo boardwalks and tried to remember the way to the open air landing strip that stood in the place of an actual aerodrome on this island backwater.

The sky above his head was festooned with bands of pink and gold as the sun threatened to rise and the last of the night stars began to wink out, one by one. The constant sonorous murmur of the ocean brushed against Ffamran's ears. Unsteadily he started off southward, weaving along the plank walks and in amidst the circular wattle and daub huts the natives resided within.

It would be good to return to Bhujerba. Ffamran thought he might talk to Tournai about making some runs to other parts; westward perhaps? Nalbina and the Mosphoran Highwaste were supposed to be lucrative markets for smugglers, and Rabanastre was supposed to be beautiful. Maybe Ffamran would simply ask for a little time off to roam about for a time? Perhaps Elza would come with him; she was always a good one for a lark.

Ffamran started to hum softly under his breath. Ivalice was vast, there was much to see and do and so many places a man could lose himself. Ffamran wondered if somewhere out in Ivalice's vastness Vassili was even now tucked up in his bed thinking about the brother he left behind? Perhaps his brother had even managed the impossible and become a Kiltias?

'Where the bloody hell is Mount Bur-Omisace, anyway?' He asked the balmy pre-dawn quiet.

Vassili had told him he would make pilgrimage there, on the day he had left Archades behind. His older brother had told him he'd bring back some prayer beads, as a souvenir. Even as a child of eight Ffamran had known his elder brother was lying. He'd known that Vassili would not return, even if he managed to find the Kiltias stronghold.

'Maybe I'll make my own pilgrimage,' he murmured, 'get my own bloody holy souvenir.'

Ffamran tried to summon up a mental map and pinpoint the Kerwon mountains in relation to the world he knew, but found that there were too many blank spots – too much of the world he did not know. That would change; one day Ffamran would see all that Ivalice had to offer and then, aboard his own ship, he would push back the boundaries even further and re-write the maps himself.

Perhaps, at some point in his explorations, he would find his brother and finally be able to tell him precisely what he thought of him.

'You left me to deal with father alone, you bastard.' Ffamran whispered. 'I had no one.' He stopped and braced his hands against the wall of one of the huts, leaning heavily as his head spun with drink and long held anger. 'No one but father, and in the end, even he went and lost his sodding marbles.'

A soft, muted sound reached Ffamran's ears, floating above the dulled hiss of the ocean. Ffamran lifted his head, suddenly alert. Again the sound came; a woman sobbing, the sound of movement. A scuffle – a fist fight? No, the sounds were wrong. He could hear deep breathing, almost bestial grunting sounds, and the slap, slap of flesh pounding against flesh.

Ffamran curled his lip in contemptuous amusement; these south islanders were primitive. They rutted out of doors like bleeding animals. He pushed away from the hut and turned to continue on his way. The harsh sound of a female gasp, half sob half scream stopped him; a voice speaking a language he couldn't understand but the pleading, pained desperation in the utterance needed no translation.

A shiver of coldness straightened Ffamran's spine; his hands tightened into fists. He started moving towards the sounds before he could think better of it. He rounded the side of the hut he had leaned against. In a darkened space between a cluster of darkened huts, amid the detritus of animal excrement and broken crockery, he saw the man and woman who had been arguing in the tavern earlier.

The man had his rough hewn cloth trousers around his ankles and the woman pinned to the ground. The woman was beating helplessly at his back and shoulders, scratching at his arms, as she fought to get out from under him. Her face was swollen and bloody from the man's fists and tears poured from her eyes.

'Oi! Get off her.'

Ffamran moved forward grabbed a fistful of the man's long dark hair and wrenched as hard as he could. With difficulty he hauled the man off the woman. The man came up swinging. Ffamran managed to turn his body, so that the blow missed his face and instead caused his whole right arm to go instantly numb. He staggered under the blow as the brutish man rounded on him.

The large islander said something uncouth and unpleasant but Ffamran had no idea what it was and thus ignored it. He balanced on the tips of his toes and raised his own fists, feinting and ducking to the right under one of the bastard's meaty swings. Deftly Ffamran managed to interpose himself between the man and the sobbing woman trying to put herself to rights while still cowering on the ground.

The man punched him in the gut; Ffamran saw stars and his knees gave way. The man punched him in the kidneys and drew back a leg to kick him in the chest. Ffamran rolled and struggled to his feet. The woman had managed to crawl away from the fray, but she remained at the entrance between the huts, whence Ffamran had entered from.

'Run!' He hissed at her, managing to dance back from another blow aimed at his jaw. If it was Ffamran's fate to be beaten to a bloody pulp he would sooner it not be completely in vain. Why didn't the woman sodding well run?

The would-be rapist was stronger, larger and the more experienced brawler in this altercation and Ffamran knew that he stood no chance of winning in a fair fight. Alas he could also not see any way of cheating. He turned his body to take another numbing blow to the side, feeling the impact rattle in his chest.

You can take the man out of the Judiciary, but you can't take the _judge_ out of the _man_, hmm, Ffamran? His snide inner critic mocked him as he collapsed to his hands and knees after another vicious upper cut from the brutish island thug. Still trying to find justice in the chaos, are you? Haven't you worked it out yet? His inner voice demanded of him. There is no justice; Ivalice is just a cess pit of corruption – and there is nothing you can do to change it.

Ffamran ignored his inner voices and instead did what the Imperial army and eight straight years alone living with Doctor Cid had taught him to do well - he rolled with the punches. Twisting in the filth he managed to kick out at the big man and send him careening back into the fencing surrounding the boundary of one of the huts. There was a crash and a grunt of pain as the man fell through the fence. Ffamran struggled to his feet, panting and wheezing in pain.

The woman rushed forward then and pressed something into his hand; Ffamran had no time to ascertain what it was as the brutish islander roared like a great beast and charged straight at Ffamran and the woman. The woman jumped back, using Ffamran as her shield. Ffamran reacted instinctively; all that hard military training rushing to the fore of his mind.

He dropped to one knee and thrust upward with the hand holding the object the woman had passed him as the man collided with him. The six inch long, viciously sharp shard of broken glass cut Ffamran's hand as his held it tight – but it did far worse to the man who rushed him.

The shard of glass punched through the man's diaphragm like a needle through cheesecloth and the man's own forward momentum worked to impale him deeply onto the protruding makeshift blade. All Ffamran had to do was hold on, even as the shockwaves of impact coursed painfully up his arms. Ffamran gritted his teeth and stared up at the man, who looked down on him in naked eyed shock. The man tried to speak; mouth opening and closing like a landed fish.

Ffamran twisted the blade of glass in the man's heart deliberately, twisting left and then right. He watched the man die; he watched the light leaving his eyes. He shoved the man backwards as his knees buckled. The man crumpled like a marionette with strings cut. His trousers were still dangling around his ankles and his eyes stared sightless up at the dawning sky.

Ffamran stood up and fastidiously examined the blood coating his hand. He sneered with distaste, crouched and wiped his hand off on the dead man's vest.

'You got what was coming to you, bastard.' He spat.

The woman stared at him, and then down to the dead man bleeding out across the dirty sand strewn ground. Ffamran watched her, too tired suddenly to try and avert the disaster he knew was about to befall him.

The woman opened her mouth and started to scream, and scream, and scream. In moments the entire village was awake and descending on the scene.

Ffamran stood beside the man he had killed, his own hand gushing blood where the glass shard had cut his palm in twain. He did not bother to run. He sighed as the villagers turned to him with furious, vengeful eyes. Death to the murderous foreigner, those eyes said without the need for words. Ffamran did not resist as some of the men of the village rushed him and slammed him down to the ground beside the corpse he had made. As they started to beat him, Ffamran wondered if they would lynch him right here, or take him somewhere else.

Tournai would be so very disappointed, Ffamran thought as he lost consciousness.

* * *

**708 O.V: Tchita Highlands**

Climbing the stairway back up out of the engine room was not easy when weighted down with hume infants who were wobbly with hunger and from lack of movement while chained in place in the engine room. Fran led the way along the gantry, keeping her senses sharp for any dangers lurking silent within the ship. Balthier walked to the hatchway and poked his head out. Viola, standing beside him gasped with joy to see sunlight and smell fresh air again. Her small fingers squeezed Balthier's hand tightly.

'Vaan – where are you?' Balthier called from the hatch.

'Here!' Came a reply from thin air about ten feet from the hatch; Viola started. Balthier rolled his eyes. The boy had clearly forgotten he was invisible to anyone who was not themselves under the arcane power of Vanishga.

'Come here and take these children would you?' He snapped. 'Better yet, have Penelo take them.' He added as he felt the warmth of another presence and hands trying to take Pedro from him. The small child whimpered but did not put up a fight. Viola in contrast looked ready to fight for him.

'Where'd they come from?' Vaan's disembodied voice asked of him. 'Are they slaves too?' Finally Vaan materialised as someone, presumably Penelo, had the sense to cast dispel on him. Viola relaxed perceptibly beside Balthier now she could see who it was he spoke to.

'One would assume,' Balthier drawled in answer to his question but his expression was grim. 'Found them chained up in the engine room. It would appear Speck is too cheap to employ a Moogle engineer and must steal children to do his maintenance for him.'

'How awful,' The heavy scent of Galbana lilies heralded Penelo's approach and then she was taking the little boy from Balthier and holding out a hand and offering a kindly smile to Viola.

'Hello,' Penelo cooed, 'I'm Penelo, this is Vaan. Would you like to come with us?'

Viola looked up at Balthier questioningly, 'I go –yes; safe, yes?' Balthier nodded and the girl finally reached out to take Penelo's offered hand.

'Cast vanishga on the infants and scarper back to the Strahl,' Balthier ordered the Dalmascan pair absently, 'Fran and I will follow in a moment.'

He ducked back into the ship without waiting for reply and found Fran leafing through a loose bound log book in one of the four sleeping cabins in the ship.

'Found something?'

He approached behind her, taking in the details of this room. Musty scent, like damp paper, unadorned walls, pristine order to the small selection of mundane objects left on display; hair brush, pomade, a glass with a spare set of false teeth sitting in some form of clear solution. It was all so stunningly ordinary. A spare wooden walking stick resting on the exquisitely made up bunk tipped Balthier off as to whose cabin this was – if he hadn't known already. Without a question of doubt, this was Speck's room.

Fran handed him the logbook, 'See for yourself.'

Balthier flicked through the pages. It looked like any other ledger on first glance; a stultifying endless list of figures scrolling down the page and spilling over onto the next. It made Balthier's eyes tired just looking at it. Then he picked out a few key phrases in the right hand column.

'Veridree, Ambervale, Nalbina, Pater-losa, Anhanna Bay, Balfonheim…..Hester-Downes…..'

Balthier frowned. 'Wait a minute here.' He flipped back a page and ran a finger over the blurring lines of spidery scrawled notations.

'Ah, here…..good gods,' he sucked in a breath, 'Veridree, 708 O.V: one female three hundred standard currency; one male one hundred fifty-five Gil standard. Stock quality poor?'

Balthier jerked his eyes from the logbook in his hands to meet Fran's gaze, 'Is this what I think it is?' he asked almost afraid to be right in this instance. 'The bastard is keeping a log and tally of the slaves he buys?'

'Keep reading,' was all Fran said. She took the book from him and flipped forward a few pages to a place he had not yet reached. She handed the book back to him, opened to this new page. Balthier dutifully read these newer entries, written more as diary entries than a clerk's log.

_Steppe lands: Cerobi outskirts. Emerald Duchess found. Price extracted. One female hume, of good quality, found; will make good candidate for the Guard. _

The pulse Balthier could hear thundering in his ears was his own. He flipped back a page or two and found another notation. He found other familiar names written therein.

_Daedalus Levine…….price exacted. No profit to be made._

_Mary-Roe…..price extracted. One hume male: middling quality; re-sale price high. _

_Valiant…..price exacted. Two hume children female; one middling quality re-sale price reasonable. One of poor quality – disposed of in usual manner. _

_Victus….price exacted. No profit to be made._

'The Victus? Was that not Biggs and Wedge's ship?' Balthier glanced at Fran for confirmation, 'Didn't the Muster state that those two had met their end against the Company?'

'They did,' Fran agreed, 'as did the crew of the Daedalus Levine and the Mary-Roe; as did the Valiant. All lost to the Company.'

Balthier dropped his gaze from Fran back to the logbook mind racing ahead. 'Daedalus, no price exacted; no profit made, hmm? Yet from the Emerald Duchess and the Valiant it refers to humes of various quality. If one presumes that the hume female from the Duchess is Jassalinda then…..'

'Then Speck is taking the children of dead pirates as his own.' Fran finished the thought for him.

Balthier flipped to the very beginning of the logbook; the earliest dates therein were from the year 701 O.V. seven years of collecting, buying, selling and stealing living breathing humes….and for what? What was Speck really after? What was his Company truly about?

'Children; bloody children,' Balthier breathed out snapping the logbook shut, 'I'd wager my right arm that every transaction in this book represents a child.'

Fran nodded, 'I would agree.'

Balthier stared at the book between his hands, 'Speck's been harvesting children from all over Ivalice. He's been doing it for years. Why the bloody blue blazes has no one noticed?' He shook the book angrily. 'There are bloody hundreds of entries in here.'

'There are.' Fran agreed calmly. Balthier closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand while keeping the log book in the other.

'Right,' he said taking a deep cleansing breath, 'Right then; let's just get out of here before I do something rash and regrettable.'

Fran quirked an eyebrow, 'We shall all appreciate your restraint, no doubt.' She turned to lead out of the room.

As Balthier made to follow Fran out of the room he noticed an open box with a collection of incendiary grenades half hidden under Speck's bunk on the floor. They were volcanoes and good quality. An idea came to Balthier and he dropped down to scoop up one of the hand bombs.

So much for leaving without rash and regrettable action……but bugger it, the man deserved it. Balthier smiled as he hefted the bomb.

Petty vengeance was just the tonic he needed to lift his spirits.

Fran was waiting for him at the hatchway and he gestured grandly for her to precede him out and away. Her expression could only be described as suspicious. Her keen gaze immediately gravitated to and fixed upon the incendiary in his hands. She gave him a long, hard look.

'Your restraint has broken already, I see.' Fran was not happy.

Balthier smiled brandishing the Volcano. 'We shall be away in but a moment, Fran.'

Fran hesitated, eyes darting from him to the bomb and then to the cockpit of the ship. It took her a split second to intuit his plan. Her ears twitched and she sighed; it was a very long suffering sigh. In the years they had been travelling together Fran had worked wonders on his hair-trigger temper; it had been years since any furious natives had tried to lynch him, for instance, but even so, there were just some aspects of his character even her pacifying influence could not completely subdue.

'I shall start running, then.' She told him tiredly.

'Good idea,' Balthier called after her, picking the lock on the cockpit security door and propping it open with a foot.

He lit the incendiary with a match from the matchbox he kept in his wondrous and well-stocked belt pouches. Balthier threw the grenade into the cockpit and slammed shut the security door.

'Bombs away!' He started to run.

Despite her words Fran had waited for him just outside the ship. The two of them sprinted across the long grass as fast as they could. Seconds later the force of the explosion, which blew half of Speck's cockpit to smithereens, still knocked them off their feet. A rush of heat and fumes flattened the grasses and seared over Balthier's covered head. Then all was still - relatively speaking.

A huge column of fire limned black and acrid smoke was already rising, twisting serpent like in the air, for all to see. The explosion alone had probably alerted everyone down at the slave market to their presence.

'Happy now?' Fran queried of him a little sharply as he helped her up and they started running once more. Balthier grinned.

'Yes.' He panted but smiled all the same. 'I do so enjoy a bit of wanton destruction.'

Fran, sensibly, refrained from comment – at least for the moment. The two pirates scarpered as fast as their legs could carry them back to the Strahl.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Nine: 702 O.V: Memory**

Ffamran woke up when he felt the rough, coarse woven noose slip loosely around his neck. Ah, yes, the lynch mob. Opening his one good eye, the one that wasn't swollen shut and gummed with blood, Ffamran tried to focus on the mass of outraged humes intent on his murder. He hurt all over but that was hardly surprising – one tended to feel a tad tender after a thorough beating.

Awkwardly Ffamran managed to kneel upright. The noose was already attached to a thick tree branch some seven feet above him, but the rope had not been pulled taut yet - hence the reason Ffamran's neck was still whole. Although he did not speak the language of the South Isles Ffamran had the odd suspicion that the rabid natives were debating the right type of knot to use to fasten the rope.

Outstanding, death by committee; evidently his luck was as jaded as ever.

Spitting old blood from between split lips Ffamran cleared his throat, 'Excuse me, do you think you could hurry up?' He asked disinterested examining his left hand. He suspected two of his fingers were broken. 'Some of us have better things to do than hang around here all day – or not hang, as the case may be.'

He received a kick in the ribs for his attempt at witticism. The blow knocked him down flat on his face into the scratchy, sun bleached grass. He didn't bother to lever himself upright. Doing so would only prove an invitation for one of the natives to kick him down once more.

'Everyone's a critic,' he muttered into the dry dust. He breathed harshly. He thought about slipping the noose from around his neck and making a run for it. Of course that assumed he had the physical wherewithal to out run a thirty strong angry mob. It also assumed he had the inclination and right now Ffamran was finding it hard to gather the wits to care whether he lived or died. He thought about passing out again.

Tournai would be so very disappointed, he thought once again, coasting on the knife edge of shock and unconsciousness. This wasn't exactly the exciting, liberating new life he'd dreamed of when he'd left Archades. (Although it was at least the _death_ he had envisioned awaited him when he decided to desert the Imperial army).

Oh well, easy come easy go…….

Ffamran closed his good eye and sighed, above and all around him the lynch mob continued to debate the best way to hang him. Ffamran drifted peacefully away. He therefore didn't hear the first shot fired, or the cries of surprise as the angry mob found themselves a target of a third party that did not need to take a vote to kill a man.

In fact, as bodies started to fall, Ffamran slept right through his own rescue.

* * *

**709 O.V: Rabanastre Palace – Day of Our Fathers**

'Yeah but – this is really important!'

Vaan gesticulated in a vaguely threatening way in the impassive face of the royal guardsman who blocked the door to the queen's audience chamber. The young guardsman, once a member of the resistance, shrugged disinterestedly and shifted his grip on the halberd he clasped.

'Sorry, her Majesty's edict; she isn't taking public petitions today.'

'But….' Vaan looked slightly stunned that his plan, in so far as it could be described as a plan, had collapsed at the first unexpected development. Clearly gaining access to her royal highness Ashelia B'Nargin Dalmasca was not a simple matter of walking up to the front door of the royal palace and expecting admittance without invitation simply on merit of need.

'This is really, really important.' Vaan pressed. 'It's a matter of state importance!' The youth added suddenly inspired.

Ili, standing a safe distance back alongside Penelo in the shade of one of the beautifully tiled porticos sheltering the open courtyard, closed his eyes and shook his head despairingly. This could only end badly.

'A matter of state importance, huh?' The bored guard looked more indulgent than annoyed. 'And what's all this about Ratsbane?'

'Oh gods….' Beside Ili Penelo almost groaned. 'Now he's done it.'

Ili, using the pillar of the portico as a convenient hiding spot, kept his face tilted down and tried not to swoon in the heat. He was wearing his wayfarers cowl again but he almost wondered if it might not help their case for him to show his face. Probably not, he decided after a moment. He knew that Balthier avoided Rabanastre most of the time and so there was a chance the resemblance between them would not be useful. There was also the danger that someone would see him that shouldn't see him.

'Yeah it's state importance,' Vaan was saying boldly, 'It's kind of sensitive information though. I can't just _tell _you.' Vaan crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his foot. The guardsman looked like he was struggling with the urge to laugh.

'Oh come off it Vaan,' the guardsman finally spluttered with surprising good humour. 'If you had anything worth knowing to tell you'd have cried it from the rooftops already.' The guardsman grinned. 'Subtlety's not exactly your forte, right?'

Ili closed his eyes and took a breath; this farce had gone on long enough. Breaking cover and striding forward even as he reconsidered the wisdom of his actions, Ili took matter into his own hands.

Fran had wagered that Speck possessed no knowledge of Ili and so she would be safe taking refuge with him, so far this would seem to be a safe assumption. If Ili revealed himself to the Dalmascan queen he would essentially be propelling himself up and onto the dangerous stage his brother adored and risking Fran's safety. He wasn't sure he wanted to do that; in fact he was certain he didn't. Nevertheless he owed it to his brother to take the chance – for some reason he was almost certain that the Lady Ashe knew something about Balthier's whereabouts.

'Excuse me,' Both Vaan and the guardsman turned to stare at him. Vaan looked confused and the guardsman's face shifted into something close to suspicion.

'Who are you, Imperial – what business do you have in the palace?' The ghost of not very well buried hostility crackled in the man's voice.

'I simply come to claim property that is mine, which your queen currently holds in this city.'

* * *

**702 O.V: Memory**

Ffamran woke slowly but with the incremental dawning realisation that he was alive, which was, under the circumstances, a pleasant surprise. At least until his body remembered the pain it was in.

There was a clink of silverware scraping over quality porcelain accompanying the sound of some raising a glass and drinking from it. Ffamran cracked open an eye (the non-swollen one) and peered out at the world warily.

He was lying on a fainting couch, much in the manner of one who has been dumped unconscious, and whose limbs have been left to their own devices. There was a subliminal hum of powerful engines reverberating through the couch and making his cheek tingle. He was on board an airship, he realised, and there was a man sitting across the room from him settling down to a rather lavish dinner with silver platters, white table cloth and Archadian red wine. Ffamran felt rather like a man who walks in late to a theatrical performance and cannot make head nor tails of the plot because he has missed the entire first act. Or at least Ffamran imagined that the analogy was sound - truthfully he had never been to a play. He found the performing arts terribly boring and predictable.

'Awake?' The man popped a mouthful of some form of white meat into his mouth. He chewed meditatively and then chased the mouthful down with a sip of wine. 'Would you care to join me?' The man gestured to the chair across from him at the small two place table cloth swathed table.

Ffamran frowned, 'And you are?'

Sitting up was a symphony in agony. His bruises had bruises and he was caked in dried blood and filth. Ffamran heaved a sigh; it was becoming a distressing habit to make up in this state. Distantly it occurred to Ffamran that something would have to be done or he'd not live to see twenty.

There was little point in wasting time with the usual questions such as _where am I? What happened? Why am I not dead?_ This wasprimarily because his throat hurt and secondly because sooner or later his mysterious benefactor would see fit to tell him anyway.

'My name is Adonis Speck, young man.' The man at the table was not old nor young, fat or thin. He was so profoundly nondescript that Ffamran was instantly on alert. He was the sort of man you could forget ever meeting five minutes after leaving his presence. The camouflage was so complete and so seemingly natural it was both fascinating and disturbing. 'And you I believe,' the man smiled without warmth, 'go by the name of Ran? Ran of the cloudbourne, is it not?' The smile turned slightly sly.

'Right,' Ffamran muttered only now realising that he had completely forgotten to speak Bhujerban and had instead been mumbling away in his native tongue – an almost unforgivable oversight on his part; concussion or no concussion. Gingerly touching fingers to the swollen left side of his face, Ffamran decided that the best defence was to go on the offensive. 'What do you want with me and how much is it going to cost?'

Speck laughed and the sound was completely unremarkable. His smile also did not reach his dull brown eyes. 'Such cynicism,' Speck shook his head feigning amusement. 'I have watched you, young man.' He fixed his gaze on Ffamran's. 'You Impress me. I see a bright future for you.'

Ffamran scratched at a thick clump of drying blood matting his hair and winced, 'I am sure I should be flattered.' He replied blandly using the same empty tone he had perfected in his time working for the hated Magister Bergen.

Speck smiled, 'A clever answer.' He gestured once more to the dinner spread and the vacant space opposite him. 'We are en-route to Bhujerba but have a few hours travel yet. I took the liberty of having one of my men fly your ship back, I hope you don't mind?'

Ffamran watched the man dully as this Speck began to dish up a plate of food for him, even though he had made no move to take his place at the table. 'There is little point in objecting after the fact, is there?' He pointed out dryly. 'I can do bugger all about it whether I like it or not.'

'A very pragmatic approach, lad,' Speck congratulated him, raising his wine glass in toast. 'I am a firm proponent of pragmatism. One can go far if one is of a practical mentality.'

Ffamran watched the man curiously. He had the distinct sensation of having jumped from the frying pan into the fire. 'Right,' He said blankly. 'What is your game then, mate? Blackmail, indentured service, or is it coercion via Cockatrice casserole?' Ffamran didn't try to rise to his feet; he knew he would just fall over.

Once again Speck favoured him with an entirely false smile, 'An interesting stratagem: controlling a person through his base functional needs.' Speck tapped his fingers on the flute of his wine glass. 'But I see you are not in the mood to discuss trivialities at present.'

'I was raised never to be trivial with strangers.' Ffamran knew he should not have spoken, but he had developed a wayward tongue of late that tended to get him into trouble. Sadly, considering he was perfectly capable of getting himself into trouble without the need of speech this only made the chances of Ffamran seeing out the year alive even more unlikely.

'Ah but if we cannot be trivial with strangers, who can we be trivial with?' Speck rejoined cheerfully, and then with jarring change of conversation tack he put down his wine glass, pushed aside his plate, and steepled his fingers together under his chin. Dull eyes fixed snake-like on Ffamran.

'Work with me boy and I shall make you rich.'

Ffamran blinked, startled by this bluntness. He frowned sensing danger but unable to discern it form or magnitude. 'I already have employment.' He said carefully, 'And I do not even know you.'

'Tournai, yes I know.' Speck nodded easily. 'I will pay him a good sum and you will sever your arrangements with him. I have a business venture in its infancy based out of Nalbina. You will head this venture up for me.'

Ffamran blinked again, 'No I bloody well won't.' He said before he could think things through and that ever present acid burn of anger surged up inside his battered body. He tried to push the rage back down, that furious wild resistance to being told what to do, but as usual failed.

Speck watched him, 'You are wasted playing the part of Tournai's runner. You are a man born to subjugate and control lesser minds, not pander to them. You are one for greatness not mediocrity. You will work for me and I will make you great.'

The only thing that kept Ffamran from launching himself across the room at the arrogant bastard was the inescapable fact that he did not have the strength. 'You can shove your sodding greatness where the sun doesn't shine.' He snarled grammar and elocution falling by the wayside (Ffamran blamed his time in the Elite barracks - Vulgar language was indeed vulgar, but it was oddly addictive once one became infected).

Speck stared at him, 'Young man, I would think carefully if I was you. I do not appreciate coarse language.'

The tiny voice of sense in his mind, the part of him that had survived Bergen's brutality, Ghis' corruption, Drace's disapproval, Zecht's indolence and lack of forethought, Gabranth's bitterness and Zargabaath's indifference began babbling in the back of his mind that it was insanely stupid to antagonise the strange man who had rescued him when Ffamran himself had no means of defending himself or escaping. Play along, the voice said, play along like you did in the Ministry of Law; don't rock the boat, don't cause trouble.

Ffamran remembered the prisoners led out to the firing squads without trial, without due process, without proof of any wrong doing. He remembered what not rocking the boat had made of him. He remembered what it had felt like to stand in line and shoot unarmed men who cowered in fear and begged mercy. Ffamran's lips twisted in a bright smirk. He selected the vilest vulgar curse he could recall and enunciated the word carefully.

Speck's eyes widened momentarily as the filthy word hung in the air between them. 'Oh dear; I had hoped for better from you lad.' Speck rose from the table, set aside him napkin and wiped his hands together. Ffamran tensed, the very air palpitating with violence.

Speck moved like greased lightning and suddenly Ffamran was sprawled on the floor of the cabin with Speck's knee in his back and the man's stiletto blade pressed to his throat. Using his free hand Speck captured Ffamran's and stretched it out across the floor of the cabin above his head.

'When a man is offered a bounty, he should take it up with both hands, young man.' Speck told him conversationally as he pulled the blade away, leaving a shallow cut to dribble blood down his throat. 'One should never question the provinance of a gift, lad, but instead seize opportunity for all it is worth.'

Still crushing Ffamran underneath him Speck wrested Ffamran's other hand, the one with the broken fingers, from under the weight of his body and pulled it taut over his head as well, placing the broken hand over the unbroken hand. Ffamran struggled but had neither physical strength nor leverage to dislodge Speck.

'Think about what I have told you, lad.' Speck held his hands in place with one wrist, the other hand holding the thin, narrow dagger. 'It really is good advice.' Speck brought the dagger down in one smooth arc and slammed it right through the meat of both Ffamran's hands until the tip imbedded into the floor of the cabin.

Ffamran screamed, more shock than pain, as a throbbing strobe flash of adrenaline and sensation rocketed through his battered body. Speck stood up and walked back to the table. He sat back down at his place and picked up his silverware. He started to eat while Ffamran started to hyperventilate.

'You really should have tried the casserole. It is quite delicious.'

Ffamran pressed his sweaty forehead against the floor of his cabin and tried not to whimper as tears of pain oozed from his squeezed closed eyes.

* * *

**709 O.V: Rabanastre Palace – Day of Our Fathers**

The guardsman tightened his grip on his halberd his eyes flashing cold hatred as Ili stepped forward, 'Imperial's have no rights to Dalmascan property, take your slander and….'

The guard stopped talking when Ili threw back his hood, 'The Strahl has never been property of Dalmasca or any other nation.' Ili smoothly interrupted towering over the shorter Dalmascan men. Ili rarely used his impressive height in this way as he loathed confrontation, but right now he deemed in necessary.

'Your Queen seized the vessel without the permission of the owners, or in the case that the owners were not able to assert their rights, the next of kin. That is myself, in this instance.'

The guardsman stared, taken aback by the strident tone Ili's words had taken. The guard looked Ili up and down from his worn boots to his old travelling clothes, his fallen cowl, and the slightly mussed dark blonde hair on his head.

'You're not the pirate.' The guard stated but he sounded a trifle uncertain. 'I've seen the man, you're not him.' The halberd shifted in whitened hands to tilt threatening towards Ili.

Ili almost smiled. 'Good of you to notice,' he murmured sweetly.

It had always been a source of confusion to Balthier and Ili as to why the resemblance between them seemed to fool so many people. Yes, they were clearly related, but Ili had at least three inches of height on his brother, he was thinner and of paler complexion, his eyes were grey not brown and his hair was fairer. It was nice to have one person at least recognise the differences between Ili and his little brother.

'I am however,' Ili continued, 'the only living blood kin of the pirate Balthier.'

Ili gestured casually belying his inner nervousness, 'Vaan here is something of a trusted associate to both Balthier and his partner Fran. I know my brother would prefer the Strahl to reside in his capable hands rather than gather dust in an aerodrome.'

The guard seemed hesitant now. He was in an awkward position; the evidence of his eyes clearly gave credence to the fact that Ili and Balthier were blood-kin, and it was acknowledged fact that Vaan and Penelo had once had the stewardship of the Strahl for an entire year, yet he clearly did not want to be seen as giving ground.

'I can't just let you in,' the guard wavered.

Ili nodded making a placating gesture with his hands. Now he had the man on the back foot he could afford to be polite, 'I understand completely; would it be possible however to take a message to her highness? I would beg audience with her majesty to discuss the future of the Strahl.'

The guard looked sceptical, but he was bright enough to recognise that passing on a message allowed him to shift the responsibility onto someone else. 'Your name?' He demanded, still clinging to his animosity like a shield.

Ili smiled crookedly, 'I am not sure how much my name will verify my intent, but if you insist.' He shrugged casually in his thick overly heavy travelling clothes. 'I am Vassili Aslar Bunansa.'

'And you say you're the pirate's brother?' The man still seemed sceptical, but perhaps it was merely residue suspicion. Balthier seemed to have been pardoned the sin of his nationality by virtue of his good deeds aboard the Bahamut yet it was, Ili supposed, entirely possible that Balthier's real name and heritage remained unknown to the wider populace of Rabanastre. Her Highness the Lady Ashe would know however and that was all that mattered.

'Yes,' Ili replied to the question smoothly. 'I am the pirate's brother.'

The guard looked highly suspicious go back to the outer chamber. 'I'll not leave my post unattended to pass on your message with Ratsbane about. He's a sneaky one.'

'Hey!' Vaan immediately piped up in complaint but Ili simply clamped a hand on the boy's shoulder and propelled him back towards the waiting Penelo.

'We will wait in the courtyard, in clear sight. I thank you humbly for your assistance.' He gently pushed Vaan along ahead of him before the anxious guard could become overwrought and start using that halberd he brandished with such vigour.

'What's happening? Did it work – can we see Ashe?' Penelo asked as the two of them approached. Her words tripped over themselves in her eagerness to know.

Ili shook his head, 'The object is not necessarily to see your queen, so much as it is to pass on the message that I am here.'

Vaan scrunched his brow, 'Why?'

Penelo understood however. 'Oh, I get it.' She smiled. 'You think Balthier's here, don't you? You think Ashe is hiding him.' The girl had the sense to keep her voice down.

Ili shrugged diffidently, also keeping his voice low. 'It occurred to me that it would be a hiding space Speck would not expect; in some ways taking refuge in Dalmasca is almost too obvious a move. It is hiding in plain sight and it is the sort of profoundly reckless thing my brother would do.'

'True,' Vaan mused, 'Plus there's no way Ashe would refuse him. He once talked her into a gambling den in Balfonheim – Basch was really not happy.' The boy paused. 'Ashe seemed to enjoy it though.'

For a moment Ili wondered what would have possessed his brother to do such a thing, and to royalty no less, but then decided he really did not want to know. Still it did make him curious to make the Queen's acquaintance all the same. His brother did not gamble with just anyone.

* * *

**709 O.V: Rabanastre Palace – Day of Our Fathers**

'The man who controls the children controls us all?' Ashe shook her head, 'What does that mean?'

Balthier sighed and gestured tiredly from his spot standing by the window. 'I'm not making much sense am I?'

He rubbed at a spot in the centre of his brow with his fingertips. 'Shall we make ourselves comfortable over there,' he pointed to the low couch at the back of the study, 'I'll try and explain.'

Ashe considered the pile of papers spread across her desk with a defeated sigh. She really should get on with all this paperwork, it was the reason she had refused all petitioners today, after all. Still she knew it was a lost cause. The choice between actually receiving an explanation from the pirate and working her way through mounds of paperwork really was no choice at all.

She rose from her chair. 'Yes, that would be best.' She walked over to the small couch and settled down into the cushions almost gratefully. She made herself comfortable pulling a cushion into her lap so she could toy with the slightly threadbare tassel.

Balthier followed her and flopped down on the other side of the couch, turning his body so he could face her. He stretched one arm across the low back of the couch and promptly took full possession of the shared space in his usual vaguely domineering, but completely subconscious, manner. Ashe tried not to be affected by his proximity.

'Long story short,' Balthier began briskly, 'I first met Adonis Speck when I was a lad of eighteen.' Balthier cast his gaze outward, tracking over the bookshelves and ornamentation of the study. 'Got myself into a bit of bother in the South Isles and ended up facing a lynching; Speck happened by and offered a rescue.'

Ashe quirked an eyebrow at this very scant synopsis, 'What did you do to warrant a lynching?'

Balthier flapped a hand in negligent dismissal, 'Killed a rapist – the natives took offence that an Imperial foreigner felt justified in dishing out summary judgement upon one of their own.'

He shrugged relaxing his shoulders a fraction. 'A fair point I suppose,' He conceded in less terse tones. A smirk tickled the edges of his mouth, 'I could be a bit rash and hot-headed in my younger days.'

Ashe almost smiled, 'You are still rash and hot-headed Balthier.' She frowned. 'Why didn't Fran stop all this?'

It was Balthier's turn to favour her with a real smile then, 'Because I did not know her at that time, and thus it might have been a bit unfair to expect her to mitigate my own misbehaviour.' His eyes danced with amusement. 'Really Highness, did you think Fran and I have been joined at the hip since the moment of my birth?'

Ashe thought about this; saying yes would seem silly, but the truth was it was still very peculiar to her to think of Balthier acting autonomously from Fran and vice versa.

'No,' she conceded after a moment, 'But I confess to finding it hard to imagine you without her.' She gave him a level look. 'I am amazed you managed to live so long on your own, knowing how impatient and disagreeable you can be.'

'Slander,' Balthier pressed a hand to his chest in mock approbation, 'Majesty I am cut to the quick by your harsh criticism.' Ashe rolled her eyes and Balthier bit back a wider smile.

'Anyway,' he said returning to his narrative, 'turns out Speck had been watching me a while. He spirited me away before the mob could string me up and tried to play upon my gratitude.'

Ashe shifted on the couch, tucking her feet up underneath her. Balthier tapped his fingers in light tattoo over the back of the couch. There was something strangely domestic about sitting on this couch beside Balthier. It was very strange indeed, Ashe decided; strange but also oddly pleasant. There had been precious little time, opportunity, or truthfully, the desire to spend time simply sitting and talking alone with Balthier during their travails together years prior - Ashe wondered now if that was yet another lost opportunity.

'What did Speck want from you?' She asked him.

'Servitude.'

Balthier seemed to think this was sufficient answer until he saw the pointed look on Ashe's face. He sighed and elaborated tiredly. 'He liked the cut of my jib; thought I was a violent, cold blooded bastard with the possibility of some brains in my head. Speck saw these dubious credentials as desirable for his crew, which was a much smaller affair back then.'

Ashe blinked in surprise. The description jarred in her mind. Certainly she knew that Balthier had killed in the past, just as she had. He knew how to acquit himself in battle well enough, as she had witnessed, and he was a self-confessed criminal – yet for all that Ashe could not equate such unpleasant attributes as he had just listed to the man she thought she knew a little something about.

'That does not sound like an apt description to me.' She said cautiously.

Balthier's eyes gleamed at her, a surprisingly warm, mischievously look, 'I shall take that as a compliment to my good character, Highness; I am quite touched.' His wide and expressive mouth quivered just short of one of his usual smirks. Ashe gave him a quelling look.

'Do as you wish,' she said shortly. 'I merely meant that I do not consider you a particularly violent man, or at least not a man who favours violence over other means of discourse.' She determinedly met his eyes. 'You are not a cruel man Pirate; your principles may not be mine, but I don't doubt that you have them and hold to them.'

Ashe was surprised when Balthier rather obviously couldn't hold her eyes. He seemed almost embarrassed and Ashe thought that the tips of his ornamented ears seemed almost pink. Had she made the pirate blush? A smile tickled the edges of her lips at the thought. What a victory that would be; and who would have imagined that the unflappable pirate could be undone by a rather bland compliment?

'Well,' Balthier said awkwardly rather pointedly staring up at the verdigree ceiling mouldings instead of her. 'I don't suppose you would say that if you had known me then, Majesty.' Balthier shook his head. 'Right nasty piece of work I was before Fran put me straight.'

Ashe was taken aback. Balthier's tone had been light as whipped cream but the cloying undertone of genuine distaste and regret edging his words was impossible to ignore. She opened her mouth to speak but Balthier spoke first, before she had time to decide what it was she had meant to say.

'Speck is a speculative sort. He is also patient and calculating. He preys on the dregs of society, and there are few men better at selling snake oil than he.'

Balthier's hand lightly bounced against the back of the couch, fingers flexing. A muscle in his jaw jumped. His eyes looked right through Ashe into his memories.

'He takes mindless thugs, or opportunistic crooks, and indoctrinates them with his nonsense until they are incapable of a thought he has not given to them. The Company he calls them, and they are his puppets.'

Ashe frowned. 'Is that not how all pirates operate?' She asked delicately. 'I understand that pirates have impressed people into service for centuries.' Ashe tried her best to keep any judgement from her tone, but obviously failed for Balthier's expression clouded thunderously.

'Not children.' He snapped. 'A pirate who adheres to a Muster, might impress a knave who owes him Gil into service until the debt is paid, but never children and never will they ask for more than a man can give.'

'Children?' Ashe tensed, 'That is what you meant about the man who controls the children…..this Speck steals children for his Company?' She stared. 'He is turning children into pirates?'

'He is turning children into far worse than that.' Balthier sighed, hand still thumping against the back of the couch. Ashe could feel the vibrations through the light wicker of the furniture.

'Back in the day, he settled for the lower forms of life, the petty thugs, the failed thieves, the brutish violent brigands too addle-brained to make a living on their own merits.' Balthier's lips twitched. 'But Speck is ever looking for a better option, and what is better than moulding a child to one's will? Why take a man whose best years are behind him when you can steal a child and extract a lifetime of servitude from them?'

Ashe watched Balthier carefully. His mild facial expression did not quiver, but the scratching of his fingers over the back of the couch gave away his agitation. Quite without thinking Ashe reached out to cover his hand with hers, no longer able to tolerate the scratchy sounds of his fingers on the back of the couch – and perhaps, not willing to watch him in agitation either. Balthier's hand was warm under her palm and she felt his whole body grow tense in surprise when she touched him. He looked startled.

'You will ruin the upholstery.'

The words fell out of her mouth before Ashe could think better of them and it was only ferocious self discipline that stopped her from colouring up, bright as a rose, at her own foolishness. To her immense gratitude Balthier chose to take the statement at face value and did not comment. He did force his hand to stillness under hers however.

'Speck is deluded, truly deluded. He believes himself beyond the laws of Ivalice. In fact he would fancy _being_ the only law of Ivalice.'

Ashe frowned; she did not like the sound of that at all. 'If his ambitions reach so far, why has he never attempted any grand rebellion? Men who seek power of such a nature usually make themselves known to the authority they reject.'

Balthier gave a half-hearted smirk and it was only when he flexed his hand against the back of the couch that Ashe realised her own hand still covered his. A dart of panic went through her at the gross impropriety of this whole situation. Here she was alone with a sky pirate, sitting on a small couch hand in hand. Had Balthier done anything other than answer her question right then it would have been enough to force her to remove her hand.

'Speck might be mad but he is shrewd.' Balthier said calmly. 'He is far more insidious than the average megalomaniac; he has no quarrel with queens, emperors, marquis' or any of the rest of you. While you remain ignorant of him he will suffer you to live.'

'Suffer us to live?' Ashe spluttered. Balthier inclined his head.

'Not everyone is a proponent of the divine right of kings, Highness. You rule in one sphere of influence and Speck commands another.'

'Meaning?' Ashe demanded crisply.

'He makes his kingdom amid the dross of society; those most rulers have no interest in. Therein is his true power, for with every war, there are more and more of the destitute and the lost for him to prey on.'

Ashe hesitated, sensing some insipient challenge to her authority in his words. 'And what is that supposed to mean?' She asked quietly, in dangerous tone of voice. 'I have done all I can for Dalmascan and Nabradian refugees; finding them shelter, work, and feeding and clothing their families….'

Balthier gave her a droll look. 'Don't fret Highness,' he drawled. 'It's a poor queen who takes umbrage at simple truth, after all.' His gaze was clear and unwavering, 'For every poor sod your kingdom offers charity, another ten die on the slopes of Bur-Omisace or some such place of dubious refuge.'

Ashe bit down on a retort that would do her no good, but her eyes blazed and she knew Balthier could clearly read her ire. She did her best but she was but one woman, heading up a small and Gil strapped nation.

'One cannot remedy all the ills of war in only a few years, Balthier.' Ashe could not stop herself from speaking and could have kicked herself for giving him the opportunity to mock her efforts.

Strangely the Pirate merely shrugged disinterestedly and ignored the whole issue. Ashe could not quite smother her relief. Balthier either did not catch this or moved by alien compassion, chose to ignore it.

'Speck tells the useless he can make them useful and the helpless that he will help them rise again. He gives these wretches purpose and stability and in exchange asks only for their bloody souls, and a lifetime's servitude to the Company; a gift for a gift he calls it.'

Something cold shivered down Ashe's spine at this description. 'You make it sound like he offers membership into a secret nation within a nation.' She pointed out trying and failing to make light of a threat she had not even known existed. 'You make it sound as if this Speck would raise an army against all Ivalice.'

Balthier met her eyes steadily, 'He gives them a coin. Their worth as a living being, carefully measured out in Gil. He makes them wear the coin on their person, or brands the mark into their skin. All Speck's people know themselves to be his chattel. They cease to be people when they take up his coin.'

Ashe felt cold from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes, 'And the children?'

Balthier spoke without inflection, 'He calls them his Black Guard; they are his pride and joy.'

Something dark and hot burned in the depths of the sky pirate's eyes and Ashe found herself holding her breath in preparation for very bad news. Yet after a moment it became clear that the storm would not break without prompting.

'How do you know this?' Ashe asked, images of an army of children on the march, infants with halberds and blood on their hands, filling her mind. The mental image was frightening because it was so very easy to conceive of. In some ways Ashe herself had been barely more than a girl when fate turned her into a blade of resistance – and Vaan and Penelo had been younger again. Good gods above, Larsa had been but twelve when he travelled with her party and he had acquitted himself like a seasoned veteran.

Just how many children were there out there, even now, being tempered into weapons to be wielded in the wars of adults?

Balthier's hand under her own curled into a tight fist. 'I have seen them.' He said almost as if he had heard her inner most thoughts. 'It was the Black Guard who brought me down in the first place. I remember now. A man I can kill, but not a child.'

Balthier's eyes were bleak. He pulled his hand from under hers and held both palms up before him. There was a strange pale crescent shaped scar puckering the flesh of both hands that Ashe had never noticed before; she wondered what he looked for in the creased flesh of his cupped hands. After a moment Balthier dropped his hands and looked up at her once more.

'Speck has made killers out of children and monsters from men,' Balthier said and his voice was almost sad and most decidedly defeated, 'and I don't think there is a bloody thing anyone can do to stop him now.'


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Ten: **

**708 O.V: Tchita Highlands - the Strahl**

'What are you doing here?'

Balthier demanded as he came to a halt before the boarding ramp to the Strahl. Fran stopped a few feet behind him, shifted her stance, and prepared her bow.

Standing at the bottom of the boarding ramp Elza watched him with arms folded across her ample chest and eyes hard. 'I could get yer kilt by the Muster for that.' She jerked her head towards the column of smoke rising on the horizon and the remnants of Speck's ship.

Balthier scowled and strode forward. 'Be my guest.' As he passed Elza he breathed the words into her hair, before brushing past and up the ramp.

Fran waited a moment more before following him up the ramp. There was a moment of pure petulance when Balthier thought about slamming the hatch in the piratess' face, but he held back. Fran would not be impressed if he resorted to extremes of pettiness. He was already pushing his luck and her patience as it was.

Vaan was waiting by the entrance to the cockpit, 'She said she'd shoot out the aft-glossair rings if I didn't let her in,' The boy admitted guiltily.

Balthier gave him a dark look, 'You could have shot her first.' He pointed out and wasn't entirely sure if he was being serious or not; Vaan's eyes widened in surprise.

'Wow you really don't like her, do you?'

Balthier refrained from comment as he took his seat at the controls and started his girl's engines. 'Everyone who's in for the ride, strap in and belt up.' He snapped out. He could feel like a laser point, Elza's hard golden eyes on him as she lounged in one of the passenger seats.

'Yer broke accord wit' the terms of t'Muster.' Her voice was disinterested as Fran activated the Strahl's flight cloak and Balthier pushed his ship into a breakneck upward spiral. He wanted to ensure that not only would no one pursue him, but that no one would even know he had left.

'I beg to differ.' The two rescued slaves were securely fastened down into just one of the passenger seats, as they were little enough to fit. They clung to each other in silent fright in response to the Strahl's rapid acceleration and increasing altitude. 'I followed the letter of the accord; I did not directly engage Speck. It is not my fault that the child I was charged to find did not happen to be aboard Speck's airship.'

Elza laughed, 'Can yer not come up wit' a better excuse than that?' She crowed her pleasure and a muscle in Balthier's jaw jumped. 'Yer could have nabbed the kids without blowin' up his ruddy airship, yer daft cocky bugger. The Muster will hang yer fer sure.'

'Plenty of better men have tried before, and my neck has thus far avoided the stretch.' He snapped out hotly, which only made Elza laugh at him more. 'Fran we're headed north – I trust you can guess our location.'

Fran did not waste time looking at him in surprise and instead merely tapped in the co-ordinates. 'You will deliver the children to _him _then?'

'Yes,' Balthier incrementally reduced his speed. 'He's good with children.'

'Who's good with children?' Vaan piped up.

Balthier rolled his eyes. 'Wait and see.'

'But….'

Balthier's hands tightened on the steering levers, 'Captain's orders, the next person who asks another sodding question, I will personally string up by the knackers, got it?'

'What are knackers?' Vaan asked without a moment's hesitation. Penelo, who was better at reading the palpable tension in the air, slapped him hard on the arm while Elza continued to cackle like a well fed Couerl.

'Right Fran,' Balthier let go of the steering controls, 'You take the helm. Vaan get your affairs in order.'

'What?' The boy's eyes were wide and blue and a trifle alarmed as Balthier half rose from the pilot's chair before Fran's firm hand on his forearm pulled him back down. Elza was still laughing as Balthier grudging returned his full attention to the helm.

Later, later he would murder Vaan. The promise of that future homicide made him feel considerably better.

'He will be pleased to see you, no doubt.' Fran murmured into the tense silence.

'Lying is beneath you, Fran.' Balthier muttered skirting the Strahl in a wide arc around the sprawling tiered mass of the Imperial Capital and headed due north towards the Pinter mountain range, the lake district of Archadia, and beyond.

'As you say,' Fran retorted mildly, 'But I do not lie,' she eyed him sharply, 'And you would not go to him if you did not know that he is trustworthy.'

Balthier refrained from comment. Fran already knew she was right and he saw no reason to feed her ego.

* * *

**702 O.V: memory**

The scrape of silverware over plate was the only sound in the airship cabin once Ffamran had managed to choke off his whimpers. The pain radiating up through his arms from his pinioned hands came in cascading waves of sensation. It was akin to having ones hands encased in a block of ice filled with razor blades, if such a thing was even possible.

Ffamran bit down on his lip savagely as he contemplated how to extricate himself from this unfortunate situation before he passed out. This was not easy when one's hands were impaled by a dagger; even twitching his arms tugged against the imposition of the blade sending a shockwave of new pain through his body.

Speck continued to eat his dinner; his movement's neat, precise, and infuriating when one has just been violently assaulted and pinned to the floor. He lifted his head and glared at Speck.

'Are you…..always…..this hospitable to potential employees?'

Speck smiled and never had there been a smile more devoid of true sentiment. 'Only the promising ones,' He murmured.

Ffamran stared at his hands; blessed numbness was beginning to sweep over the pain as his brain released a number of interesting chemicals to ease his discomfort. Immensely grateful for the flexibility his youth and lithe frame afforded him, Ffamran moved inch by inch until he had his knees underneath him. He ended up in an awkward kneeling position, but at least it allowed him a little more dignity than lying supine on the floor.

'Do you mind if I get up now?' Panting in response to what he was about to do Ffamran nevertheless clung on to his composure with a certain steely panache. He had worked too hard to earn his façade to give it up now. If he had not bowed to Magister Bergen he would not bow to this man.

'Oh by all means,' Speck sipped from his wine glass, 'if you can.'

'Thank you,' Ffamran gritted his teeth, squeezed his wet eyes closed and sucked in a quick breath. The floor of the airship was steel coated in a thin skein of woven carpet; Speck could only have driven the knife about half an inch into the weave of the carpet, and so it would be easy to pull it loose. Unless of course Speck had the pure physical might of a behemoth to match his sadistic streak, but Ffamran somewhat doubted that.

Three, Ffamran breathed, two……one!

Wrenching his arms upward from the shoulders he refused to release the pained hiss of breath that caught against his clenched teeth as he jerked his hands up, so that his hands moved up the length of the blade impaling them and smacked against the hilt for an agonising second before the dagger came loose from the floor. Gasping for a sharp moment he raised his pinioned hands and gripped the hilt of the dagger with his teeth as he pulled down with his hands.

The sensation of steel sliding down through flesh was one Ffamran would not soon forget; time contracted, stretching and truncating in a red tinged cascade of seconds that encapsulated a delicate moment of horrible pain that would forever embellish the memory. Then Ffamran's hands were free and he turned his head to spit the dagger from between his teeth.

Tears blinded him until he savagely blinked them away as a fresh surge of new pain throbbed through his body. Magisterium training had taught him that if he gave way to the pain it would only be worse on him. Therefore he rose jerkily to his feet and moved stiff legged to the table where Speck pretended to ignore him. Bloody handed he managed to pull the spare chair out, sat down a little heavily and grabbed a fistful of stiff laundered white napkins. He bundled them against the pumping wounds in his hands.

'Would you like some casserole?' Speck asked him gesturing with his fork to the silver tureen sitting in the centre of the table spread.

Tiny droplets of sweat had begun to bead upon Ffamran's brow and top lip and the urge to allow his lips to settle in a pained snarl was almost overwhelming, but pride had a stranglehold upon Ffamran and instead he contrived to smile blandly as he shook his head.

'Thank you, but I must decline,' he held his hands upward and pressed against his chest as blood spilled in a hot wash down his wrists and soaked into the cuffs of his already ruined shirt, 'I find I'm lacking in appetite at the moment.'

Large crimson droplets of blood had fallen to splatter the tablecloth and the napkins he tried to shove against each hand simultaneously were fast reaching saturation point. Ffamran worked at controlling his breathing and pulse rate to slow the rate with which his blood could pump free and decorate the snowy white canvas of Speck's table.

'We shall be within sight of Bhujerba shortly,' Speck told him after a few moments of pain charged silence.

'That's nice.' Ffamran's voice had taken on a breathy quality and he tried to constrain the wild trembling that had taken his body now that the rush of adrenaline. He was reminded that not many hours before he had been soundly beaten and almost lynched by an angry mob. Under the circumstances Ffamran was impressed with how well he had coped so far.

Speck studied him critically from over the table. He raised one hand glowing with healing power and almost negligently waved a curaga Ffamran's way. The effect of the spell upon his over-sensitised body was akin to being slapped by a gigantic velvet covered hand made of soft ocean waves – if that made any sense at all. Ffamran almost fell face forward into the table with relief but steeled himself against the impulse.

'Better?' Speck asked seeming only vaguely interested.

Ffamran forced an equally mild expression onto his face. 'Much obliged.' He gritted out falsely sweet as he tried to stifle whimpers of pain and relief. Swallowing down the urge to launch himself across the table at Speck in an attempt to bodily tear his smirking head from his shoulders, Ffamran's eyes fell on the bowl of casserole.

'You know, I think I might have some casserole after all,' he mused reaching with a bloodied hand for the ladle in the tureen. He met Speck's eyes coldly across the table. 'Would like some more while I'm serving?' He asked smiling at the man who had hurt him without really smiling; challenge in every syllable.

Speck smiled, accepting challenge given with the slightest incline of his head. 'Thank you.' He said. Ffamran handled the ladle with awkward care, stopping to retie his scarlet drenched makeshift bandage before it could fall loose and trail into the food. He filled Speck's plate first and then his own.

He cut into leg of Cluckatrice, ignoring the jolts of pain that zipped through his hand from the blade wound as he did so. Speck made an identical slice into his own leg of meat. Ffamran took a bite, chewed and swallowed. Speck took a bite, chewed and swallowed almost in unison. Never once did either man break eye contact. Speck poured a glass of still water for Ffamran and he took a sip before taking another bite of casserole.

'You're right,' Ffamran said conversationally after a moment, 'This is a good casserole.'

'I shall pass on your compliments to my chef,' Speck smiled without smiling. Ffamran returned the gesture.

'Please do,' he reached for his water glass again and his bloody fingers left smeary stains of red all over the expensive crystal. Ffamran set the glass aside and dabbed at his lips with another, unsoiled, napkin. He looked up and held Speck's eyes.

'You were lucky before,' he told Speck pleasantly. 'I didn't expect your attack, but next time you will not be so fortunate.' Ffamran smiled and this time there was genuine malice in the expression, 'Try it again and I'll gouge out your eyes and spit into the bleeding sockets, you bloody bastard.'

Speck smiled and did not bat an eyelid, 'Really?' he carefully laid his cutlery across his cleared plate. 'Yes,' he mused softly. 'I was right about you. You are indeed a man after my own heart.'

* * *

**709 O.V: Palace Of Rabanastre – Day of Our Fathers**

'I don't see why we can't just break in,' Vaan said for the umpteenth time and Ili, a man born with a huge well of patience for his fellow beings, found his fingers itching with the desire to cuff the brat around the back of the head. He wondered how Ffamran, who most definitely did not have much of a surfeit of patience, had managed to restrain from killing the loquacious youth before now.

'Vaan we can't just go burglarising the palace,' Penelo told him once more in the long suffering tones of one who has had this conversation many times before.

'Sure we can,' Vaan argued back, 'I mean I know that the whole falcon signet stone hidden passage to the treasury has been bricked up, but still….'

'Vaan,' Ili spoke with leaden patience, 'in the name of the Father and his holy spirit would you please stop talking?'

Both Dalmascan youths turned to stare at Ili, who sat on the parched and baking stone floor of the outer palace court yard with his back against one of the marble pillars. Bony and long-legged Ili's shadow looked almost preying mantis like as it stretched across the far wall of the walled in courtyard. Penelo giggled, covering her hand with her mouth and Vaan scowled somewhat hurt.

Ili frowned curiously, 'Why do you laugh?'

Penelo grinned, 'No reason, it's just that you looked and sounded just like Balthier when you said that.' The girl paused. 'Well, Balthier wouldn't say please, and he wouldn't ask in the name of the Father either,' she stopped and shrugged, 'He'd say something like: "Vaan bloody shut up now or I'll fling you out of the airlock by your ear".'

Vaan stopped frowning and chuckled, 'Yeah, that's what he'd say.'

Ili gave the boy a sceptical look, 'And the fact that my brother summarily threatens you with bodily harm is cause for amusement?'

Penelo and Vaan shared a grin. 'Oh he doesn't mean it.' Penelo said cheerfully. 'He's just, well you know,' she shrugged, 'He's your brother, after all. He's just being Balthier.'

Ili sighed, 'You should hold him to a better standard of behaviour,' he pointed out almost primly, 'my brother was always a law unto himself.'

Ili looked down at his own sturdy travelling boots then as painful memory assailed him. He stared at his old boots coated in dry dust and gritty sand, but didn't see them. Instead he saw into the depths of his memory. He remembered when his ten year old little brother had made Akademy history when he was expelled on his first day; expelled for breaking a chair over the head of a third year cadet, no less. Father, even with all his influence in senate and Judiciary alike, had been hard pressed to have Ffamran re-enrolled.

Still what Ili remembered with a certain guilt right now was that at the time he had found his little brother's theatrics a boon in disguise. It had served as helpful distraction from the increasing ugly feuding between Ili and their father. With a further pang of regret Ili realised he had escaped Archades long before Ffamran had finished his first year of Akademy. It occurred to him that he had never asked his brother how he managed to get through the subsequent five years of schooling without resorting to acts of flagrant violence.

Penelo surprised Ili out of his thoughts by reaching out to squeeze his shoulder, her expression both curious and sympathetic, 'We know he doesn't mean it. He and Fran have always looked out for us, in their way.'

'Perhaps you are right,' Ili smiled and rose to stand again, looking up at the ferocious Dalmascan sun. 'Let's retire to the shade before my Northern Archadian bones flake away to dust, hm?'

Vaan gave him a crabwise look, 'When you say shade….' began in wheedling tones.

'_No_ Vaan.' Ili and Penelo said in unison. 'We are not going to go sneaking around in the palace.'

'Spoilsports,' Vaan grumbled, 'Balthier would have been game for it.'

* * *

**Rabanastre Palace – study:**

'Well,' Balthier said abruptly rising from the sofa and pacing restless a few feet towards one of the old bookcases. He moved so swiftly that Ashe momentarily thought he was going to walk straight into the bookcase.

'Balthier?' Ashe too rose from the sofa, more than a trifle startled by his sudden movement.

He turned to flash her with a wry grin over his shoulder, the expression patently false. 'Sorry Highness, I seem to have come over shockingly melodramatic all of a sudden.'

Ashe gave him a long level look, 'Are you referring to your statement that this Speck has made, and I quote: "killers from children and monsters out of men"?'

Balthier had the grace to wince. 'Hmm, quite,' He shrugged and turned to face her fully again, faint smile tickling at the corners of his mouth though his eyes remained shadowed and pinched. 'In my defence I should point out that I have had a rather stressful few months; enough to excuse the occasional doom laden proclamation, I'd say.' He brushed his hands down the front of his borrowed white shirt. 'I'll try and refrain from now on however,' he smirked. 'Hardly in keeping with the leading man, is it now?'

'How pervasive is the problem Balthier?' Ashe asked him seriously. 'Has this man stolen Dalmascan children, or Archadian? Did you not think to let myself or Larsa, or someone in authority, know of this market in slave children?'

Balthier made one of his habitually airy and meaningless gestures with his hand, negligently rolling his wrist, 'Ashe, do not assume that your example is replicated throughout Ivalice; children – alongside their parents in some cases – have been sold into slavery under the nose of one empire or another for centuries. It is legal in Rozzaria and politely ignored in Archadia so long as the slave owner is discrete.'

Ashe opened her mouth to chime in with one of many instant rebuttals to that cynical comment. Balthier gave her a keen look and continued before she could begin, 'There is also the point of fact that I was not sure anyone would _believe _me should I do the civic minded thing and draw it to the attention of the local constabulary.' He arched his brows pointedly, 'I am something of a wanted outlaw, after all.'

Ashe did not believe this last excuse at all; Balthier had no fear of any law, or any prince, in any land. No, rather Ashe suspected that in his usual manner Balthier had decided to take matters into his own hands, completely ignoring the interests and possible aid of those in legitimate positions of power, such as Ashe herself – at least until he found himself in dire straits.

'How many children, Balthier,' Ashe stood firm and folded her arms across her chest, 'Do not make me ask you again.'

For a long moment she simply locked his gaze with her own and then, perhaps for the first time in their acquaintance, she managed to stare him down. Ashe watched with quiet satisfaction as Balthier dropped his gaze to the woven Nabradian rug covering the floor of the study.

'I don't know for sure, hundreds perhaps, maybe even a thousand or more.' Balthier sighed and dragged his gaze back to her, 'Speck's operation has more branches than a hydra has heads, Ashe. He seems to be everywhere and everywhere he is, he is well insulated from the likes of me – perhaps he is even protected from the Dynast Heir as well.'

'A thousand children used as a slave army?' Ashe shook her head vehemently, 'Orphans and the victims of war, used as pawns in one man's bid for power?' A flame of pure fury lit inside her chest. The same rage that had filled, and sustained her, all those years ago in the Garamsythe Waterway when she stormed her own palace in a resistance battle against the usurper Vayne.

'No this cannot be borne,' her resolve hardened. 'I do not care if I have to reach out the hand of friendship to Balfonheim and every pirate den in Ivalice, but I swear I shall root out this canker and destroy it.'

She looked up then to see Balthier watching her with a strange expression on his face. He seemed caught between amusement and something she could not classify; as she watched that expression shifted again, becoming something bright and fierce and igniting behind his eyes. She realised that what she saw in those eyes was something _hopeful_.

Taken aback by this very unexpected desplay of obvious sentiment which Ashe was sure had nothing whatsoever to do with her Ashe frowned cautiously. 'Balthier?'

'Ha, Highness I swear I could kiss you,' Balthier laughed abruptly; the laugh was so incongruous and so very unlike him. There was not a trace of cynicism to it, or feigned affectation. Instead he laughed again with a sudden whoop of noise and almost bounded across the room toward her. Ashe did not have time to react at all before Balthier did something so unlike himself that Ashe could scarce believe it. He embraced her fully, wrapping his hands around Ashe's small waist and hoisting her bodily off the floor. He swung her around in a half circle, his face suffice with a wild and uncomplicated joy that shocked Ashe to the core. In that moment she wondered if she knew this man at all.

'She's alive – she's alive!' Balthier exclaimed. 'Gods be damned but I remember now.'

The strength of Balthier's arms around her, the feel of his long lean body as he crushed Ashe against him, and the fact that he seemed completely transported by whatever joyous epiphany had so taken him, all conspired to rob Ashe of the good sense she had been born with. It was a moment therefore before reality intruded once more and she realised how very bad it would be to be caught waltzing around her father's study with a presumed deceased sky pirate.

'Balthier! Balthier put me down,' Ashe tried for authoritative and instead ended up sounding breathy, startled, and slightly girlish. There was a laugh caught in her throat that desperately wanted to join his own, even if she had no knowledge of what had so infused the pirate with happiness.

Still Balthier did deposit her back on her own two feet. Nevertheless somewhere between putting her down and stepping away from her Ashe was almost sure she felt the quick, butterfly brush of his lips against hers. Or at least she thought she had; something had made her lips tingle after all – and there was no one else in the room.

'Balthier if you do not start to make sense this second….' Ashe almost gasped. Had he really just kissed her? Had she really heard him laugh with pure, unadulterated relief?

Balthier had wandered away from her a few steps as he tugged at his cuffs, still smiling. 'I remember now.' He told her quite calmly. 'Your words of just now, it made me remember.' He turned to face her, and despite the resumed and familiar coolness of his tone his eyes were still bright and alive with that same happiness that had so transformed him seconds before.

'Ah Ashe, I remember now. She's alive; _Fran is alive_.' He laughed again, ragged with an edge of pure euphoric relief, 'I've been a fool, a daft and maudlin fool.' He shook his head sharply as if to clear it of the last of his forgetfulness. 'I cannot believe that I came all this way, and yet still forgot our plan. I've been sleep walking this entire time.' He scoffed at himself. 'Fran is laughing at me, I am sure of it. What a bloody fool I have been.'

Ashe opened her mouth to question, to demand explanations, to ask him if had really just danced around her father's study with her and kissed her on the lips (even though that was _hardly_ the most pressing point of conversation!). Truthfully she wasn't sure what she intended to say or do. Her head was spinning, which seemed to be a rather habitual hazard from spending too much time in the company of this most mercurial of sky pirates. Sadly, or perhaps not, Ashe did not have the time to do anything at all as someone chose this moment to rap on the closed door of the study.

'Your Majesty?'

Ashe felt the bottom drop out of her stomach as Balthier froze and stared at the closed study door. He turned to her with a too blank expression that nevertheless spoke plain of their precarious position. Ashe stared back at him for a moment in empty panic and then jabbed her finger fiercely towards the darkest corner of the room, bracketed in by the ceiling to floor bookcases.

'Hide,' she mouthed silently to him, 'Don't make a sound.'

Balthier didn't argue and instead moved very swiftly to assume his hiding place. The intruder at the door knocked again. 'Your Majesty?' Ashe recognised the voice of her captain of the guard.

'Yes?' Ashe called in her most imperious tone of voice, 'What is it?' She moved towards the door but did not open it. 'I believe I requested that I not be disturbed Captain.'

'Forgive me Majesty, but citizen Vaan and Penelo have requested an audience with you. They are accompanied by a man who alleges to be kinfolk with the pirate Balthier. The man says he has come to take possession of the Strahl.'

Ashe jerked her head around to the corner Balthier lurked in. She couldn't see him until he moved along the bookcase to poke his head cautiously around the edge. Balthier was frowning in deep thought.

'Ask if this man has a name,' he enunciated the sounds of each word, without uttering a sound. Ashe frowned suddenly suspicious, she had not been aware Balthier had any family – but then again what she did not know about the man could fill her palace and grounds to the brim. Something in his keen expression as he waited for her to relay his question suggested that kinfolk coming looking for him was not as unlikely as Ashe might have presumed. Ashe's brow was beginning to ache from all the frowning she was doing and she rubbed at her forehead irritably as she turned back to the closed door.

'Does this gentleman have a name, Captain?' She called through the door.

'Yes Majesty; he says his name is,' there was a pause then and it was clear thereafter that her captain was quoting when he spoke again, 'He says his name is _Vassili Aslar Bunansa._'

Ashe had been watching Balthier's face the entire time and she saw his reaction to the name before he had time to hide it. There was surprise (but also recognition), and then sudden relief that was instantly replaced by suspicion. This was then in turn over-laid by careful, studied nonchalance. To complicate the matter further Balthier's shoulders sagged even as his eyes narrowed in tension; the contradiction in his body language was enough to pose many, many questions in Ashe's mind.

Ashe arched her brows in pronounced question, and it suddenly occurred to her just how deeply she trusted Balthier, so much so that she was already allowing his reactions to influence her perception and her actions. The realisation disturbed her, but she did not have time to think on it any further. She stared at him and her solid gaze demanded the truth from him, if not now than later. Balthier held her gaze and nodded slowly.

'My brother,' He said without making a sound. Ashe blinked feeling almost light headed.

'There are two of you?' She demanded, in a harsh whisper before she could think better of it (or think at all). 'There are _more_ Bunansas running around out there?'

Surely one surviving Bunansa was dangerous enough? Suddenly visions of innumerate heirs of Cidolfus running rampant all across Ivalice filled Ashe's head. She didn't know whether to laugh or start screaming. Balthier alone was an unbridled force of distraction and anarchy; Ashe shuddered to think what any brother of his might be like.

'Majesty – did you speak? Is there someone in there with you?' Her captain of the guard seemed closer to the door now.

Ashe split her focus between the door and Balthier, who looked a trifle abashed. Ashe took a deep breath to gather her thoughts and wrenched open the door. Her captain almost fell straight through the opening but managed to regain his balance before he humiliated himself completely. When he straightened up he found Ashe staunchly blocking the doorway.

'Captain,' Ashe tilted her chin up and drew herself up to her not that impressive full height, 'bring Vaan, Penelo, and this Mister Bunansa to me immediately.' Her order brooked no possibility of dissent. All the same Ashe had to resist turning around to glare at the bookcase Balthier hid behind as she added under her breath, 'I think it is time to put this nonsense to rest once and for all.'

* * *

_A/N: To everyone reading this story, apologies for the long time in updating, and apologies for not replying personally to anyone who reviewed in the last month; life became a bit hectic recently I will do better in future. ;P_


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